The Ten Year Mark
by cloudymagnolia
Summary: After ten years of happy cohabitation, Touya's and Yukito's relationship shatters spectacularly. In the midst of their emotional turmoil, a new enemy appears, and she's got a grudge. Mending their broken relationship just got way more interesting... TxY
1. Sexual Jealousy of the Worst Kind

**A/N: Thank you for joining me! This story will be in seven parts – this is the first. Updates will be roughly every three or four days, possibly more frequently down the road. Enjoy!**

The first time that Yuki turned Touya down for sex, Touya was surprised. Yukito's carnal appetite, like his appetite for food, was three times that of an average man, and he wasn't shy about demanding more from Touya if he felt he wasn't being satisfied.

The second time that Yuki turned Touya down, three days later, Touya was worried. He began watching Yukito carefully, with anxious eyes, concerned that his lover was sick or ailing and too afraid to tell him.

He did not like what he found. At first, his mind rebelled against what he was seeing. He and Yuki had lived together for over eleven years, had lived _alone_ together for almost nine. Surely he wasn't purposely trying to hide his body from him? Surely he wasn't purposely avoiding his touch?

Surely he wasn't purposely averting his eyes when they kissed?

Surely he hadn't meant to avoid responding to Touya's anxious "I love you" by having a sudden, inexplicable coughing fit and then feigning deafness when Touya asked him if he was all right.

The third time that Yukito turned Touya down, he was suspicious, but hardly surprised. For the next several days, two competing instincts raged behind hooded eyes. His first instinct was to respect Yukito's privacy. There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for his strange behavior, and he should trust his lover enough to wait for him to come to _him_. The second instinct was entirely a jealous one, which told him to pin Yukito down on the bed and _demand_ an explanation and an apology for his strange behavior, never mind that if his lover began to feel even the slightest bit threatened he could transform into an ancient magical being and beat all sorts of shit out of him.

What Touya eventually decided on was a compromise. He waited until he knew that Yukito would be undressing for his shower – they had showered together enough times that Touya knew his lover's morning routine almost as well as he knew his own – and then "accidentally" barged into the bathroom. Touya was a crummy actor, and Yukito knew him very well, so he didn't try to pretend that it had been a real accident. Even if he had wanted to come up with one, any excuse he might have made died on his lips as soon as he saw what Yukito was hiding from him.

Deep, angry bruises ran up and down Yukito's back. Some were so dark as to be almost black, some were the sickening yellowish purple that appeared when a healing bruise was reopened. He had bandages wrapped around his forearms – neatly on his left, haphazardly on his right, a sure sign that he had been trying to ministrate to himself – and the circle of bandages on his upper thigh was beginning to ooze a nasty, crusty rust color.

Touya gulped, and raised his eyes to Yukito's. He was expecting pain, embarrassment, guilt, relief, _something_ – maybe even the too-innocent expression Yukito wore when he decided, for the sake of his own sanity, to pretend that he actually believed one of Touya's tissue-thin pretexts for a blatantly obvious action. What Touya got was sheer, brute steel and simmering anger.

"Get out." It was a flat command. Touya licked his lips nervously, eyes flicking between Yukito's injuries and Yukito's eyes.

"Do you want me to help you with the bandages?" he finally asked, his voice coming out tense and strained.

"Get out," Yukito repeated, this time with a glacial bite in his voice and an icy glint in his eyes. Touya left, more shaken than he wanted to admit. Yukito had never before threatened him with the possibility of Yueh.

He made his way into the kitchen, calm from shock, and clattered some plates around as he threw together a quick breakfast, like he did every day. He heard the water of Yukito's shower turn on, and then later turn off. He washed his dishes, grabbed his briefcase, and headed out the door. It never once occurred to him that Yukito's injuries might have come from anything besides an affair gone horribly, horribly wrong.

What he did next was shameful. He left their apartment building, for all the world like he was headed for his Friday clinical, but instead of turning the left at the corner that would take him to the bus stop, he turned right, crossed the street, and doubled back. Five minutes later he was sitting stiffly at a window table of the coffee shop directly across from his apartment building. He had bought an over-priced, designer coffee for the look of the thing, but he was too tense to drink it. He knew that in that moment, he looked exactly like the half-crazed, jealous boyfriends that you sometimes read about in criminal cases, and the thought made him sick.

But even shocked, shaken, and drunk on jealous rage Touya was clever and Touya knew his lover. Yukito panicked easily and often allowed his judgment to get clouded by insecurity or emotion. Sure enough, Touya had only been sitting there for half an hour when Yukito, looking preoccupied and disheveled, strode purposefully out of the apartment building and began heading south.

To Yukito's credit, he never once entertained the notion that Touya might be following him – a realization that twisted the white-hot knife of guilt that had gotten lodged half-way down Touya's gut at his shameful, dishonest behavior. While Yukito led Touya a merry chase, dodging through alleys, ducking down side streets, and cutting through playgrounds, he never did anything to purposely hide his trail. As he worked his way through the maze that was the underbelly of Tokyo proper, he began picking up speed. By the time Touya had been following him for an hour, Yukito was nearly sprinting.

At this point, all Touya could do was try his best to keep up and pray that Yukito wouldn't lose him. Touya had been hopelessly lost for at least the past three miles, and they had left the last possibility of a taxi cab in the dust long since. They were in the true slums now, areas where people kept their heads down and gangs were a fact of life. If Touya got lost here, he could probably make it home in one piece. Probably.

Part of Touya's brain – the very small part that was preoccupied with neither keeping his lungs from giving out nor with keeping a lid on his jealous wrath – fussed and worried at the ease with which Yukito was navigating the grimy streets. To Touya, they all looked the same, and the fact that anything that could have possibly been construed as a street sign had been stolen or destroyed long since helped matters not at all. But Yukito was running down a street where any sudden movement was like asking for a bullet in the back with the confidence and self-possession of ownership. Yuki's work as a medical anthropologist had taken him into some rough parts of town, he knew, but surely the foundation wouldn't ask him to spend time in a neighborhood like this?

Touya had a bad moment then, when he turned a corner that Yukito had darted behind fifteen seconds earlier and met an eerily deserted street. His heart thumped painfully in his throat, and his hands shook with panic – until he noticed the alleyway, hidden in the grimy shadow of the nearest building. Some vestige of his long-gone sixth sense made Touya tread stealthily up to the alley, keeping his back close to the brick, and peer carefully around the corner. He wasn't sure whether he should sigh with relief when he saw Yukito or groan when he saw who he was with.

The alley had probably been basketball courts once, or a concrete park, but public works projects of several generations had pushed the buildings around it up so close that now it looked almost like a grey, dilapidated courtyard with only one exit. Yukito was standing at its center, back facing the alley and Touya, arms crossed and spine hyper-extended in defiance. He was completely ringed by a motley group of street urchins and teenage cut-throats – the kind of kids that would grow up to be thugs, but whose voices hadn't changed yet. As Touya watched, one of the ring stepped forward with the arrogant swagger of an insecure leader. The grubby kid spat elaborately and made a big show of looking down his nose at Yukito as he nonchalantly lit a cigarette – no mean feat when the kid was half a head shorter than the encircled man.

"Look, fellas," he drawled blandly, flicking a greasy hunk of not-quite-black hair out of shallow, calculating eyes. "Faggot's back. And he's nearly a week early, too. What an _honor_." The inflection on the last word made Touya gulp. We might be kids, it said, but we can still kill you. And you'll be too surprised to even put up a fight. "Did you miss us that much, _Faggot_?" the ringleader snapped. His eyes crinkled in fake, cruel humor. "No. It's your _boyfriend_ that you missed. Boy, he must really be good. You just keep coming back for more. You just can't get enough."

Touya closed his eyes in horror. For a few sickening, dizzying moments he had to focus every iota of his willpower towards breathing, towards staying upright, towards not making a noise. He told himself it had been what he had been expecting, that he had known it all along – but it was a lie. Part of him, some inner, deeper Touya had firmly believed, even as he was chasing Yukito through the very lowest dregs of Tokyo, that it was all some giant misunderstanding. Desperation and panic making him strong, Touya managed to control his shudders, and forced his conscious mind back into the position of control. It would be a long time before Touya realized that taking this crazed kid's testimony as proof of Yuki's infidelity might not be the best idea.

"Squirmer!" the boy screamed suddenly, flicking the lit cigarette lightly – almost lazily – at Yukito's face. "Get shit-sucker. I'm sure Faggot here wants to see his boy toy."

One of the ring, one of the smaller boys, Touya noticed vaguely, detached himself and scrambled through a broken window in one of the adjoining buildings. Touya made a point to watch the boy carefully as he gingerly picked himself over the broken glass, but Touya doubted that he would have recognized him again if he saw him. The grime, the hunger, and the malice on each boy's face was as disfiguring as any mask.

"So, Faggot," the ringleader turned those lazy, unconcerned eyes back to Yukito. "What do you want?"

"I want to finish it. Today." Yukito's response was a shard of ice that could have punched through steel. The ringleader's face went carefully blank as the answer washed over him, a sure sign that he was fighting back a shiver.

"Oh? You got a death wish?" The boy drawled, but the glint of fear in his eyes would not have been lost on Yukito. Yuki said nothing, standing his ground, and allowed his silence to make the ringleader uncomfortable.

The kid spat again. "_And what makes you think that I'll agree?" _he hissed finally. The circle of kids had surreptitiously been pulling closer as their ringleader spoke, and now some were barely an arm-span away.

"We had a deal," Yukito said flatly.

"Oh, a _deal_," the ringleader said dismissively.

"It's in the rules," Yukito continued, a very faint note of triumph in his voice. "A substitute can pay the price, instead."

"But that's not the only concession you had me make," the boy shot back, fake smile slipping off his face to reveal hate glittering in his eyes like a black diamond. "It's _against_ the rules to break up the blows. Do you know why we _chose_ a thousand blows with a lead pipe as the price to leave the gang?" Yukito said nothing, but the silence was neither a yes nor a no. "_Because you can't survive it_. But you, now, we've been giving you an unfair chance. How many blows are you at now?"

A small, weaselly looking kid darted up from somewhere in the ring behind the leader. "Five hundred forty," he said nervously, keeping his eyes carefully on Yukito as if he was afraid of what the petite, unarmed, surrounded man might do.

The leader whistled in mock-surprise. The pause had given him a chance to recover his swaggering mask. "Five hundred forty blows, broken up in five sessions. Y'know, that's not bad. Usually when we have to administer the thousand blows, our _guest_ is dead after 70. But still, Faggot. But still, Tsu-ki-shi-ro Yu-ki-to," the gang leader fired every syllable like it was a missile, and this time he got the reaction he was looking for. Yukito stepped back as if struck, and just for a moment, his silhouette was outlined in fear. The leader grinned. It might have almost been an attractive smile, if the eyes above it weren't marinated in crazed loathing.

"That's right," the leader whispered, as if he was trying to caress or reassure the man in front of him. "You shouldn't have told shit-sucker your real name. You shouldn't have told shit-sucker so much about you. I wonder what else good ol' Uncle Blackjack knows about you now."

Suddenly, the kid whipped around, his expression turning to hard lines so fast that Touya decided he must be insane. The punks directly behind him jumped back, and then shuffled nervously amongst themselves as he surveyed them with a look of disgust.

"_Squirmer! Where's shit-sucker?"_ the ringleader screamed. There was an explosion of broken glass from further down the building, and a strangely-shaped heap tumbled out of a first-floor window and hit the ground.

Yukito jerked forward as if to run towards where the disfigured pile lay on a bed of broken glass, but was brought up short by the ringleader, who stepped forward and cleared his throat politely. In his right hand, he had materialized a battered length of leadpipe.

Touya's dizziness returned three-fold as part of the scene clicked into clearer focus. His mind's eye wanted to skitter across the dirty heap under the broken window, but as the figure groaned and whimpered, he forced himself to stare at it until his brain sorted out the images. He had to swallow down the bile rising in his throat.

It was a kid. A teenager, actually – Touya would have placed his age at about eighteen, and he was possibly the oldest one there except for the ringleader. He was filthy, and naked except for a soiled, frayed blue tarp that had been carelessly draped over his shoulders. His strange shape, Touya realized with a jolt that went way beyond horror, was caused by a heavy crossbeam that lay across his shoulders. His wrists were tied to it with what looked like bike chains, and his face had been battered beyond all recognition.

"I _told_ you that if you didn't finish this fast enough, we would give you _incentive_," the leader purred, now tossing his length of pipe from hand to hand. Touya had to close his eyes when he realized that the pipe was stained with dried blood. "But boy," he continued, positively glowing with sick glee, "I sure don't know what keeps you coming back to the kid. We've all had a turn with him by now, and he's just no fun at _all_. All whimpers and cries and 'please-not-agains.'"

Yukito was shaking in what the ringleader probably thought was fear, but Touya could identify as rage. Rage, and the effort of keeping Yueh at bay.

"We're finishing this now," Yukito said, his voice clipped from the effort of control.

"Didn't you _hear_ me, Faggot?" the gang leader drawled, still tossing the pipe from hand to hand. "I don't take orders. And I'm going to have to be in a _real_ good mood to let shit-sucker go even though you've broken the rules."

"We had a deal about that," Yukito said, voice still clipped, eyes following the pipe as it travelled back and forth. Its trajectory stopped.

"And I call foul play," the leader snarled, once again losing his cool in the heat of his insane anger. "My boys are _good_ knife throwers. Ten minutes of target practice and you should have been mince meat – no way am I gonna believe that they hunted you _five times_ and only hit you on each arm and the thigh." He took a breath, and the calm mask schmoozed back over his face. "But who knows," he continued lightly, going back to tossing the leadpipe. "Beating _shit_ always puts me in a good mood. And besides, even if you _can_ survive a hundred nine blows at once, no _way_ can you survive four hundred sixty."

At a motion from the leader, the kids lounging near the far wall scattered, leaving a large open space.

"After you," the leader said sarcastically, using the pipe to indicate the wall. Yukito stood his ground for four seconds – just long enough to prove he could, just long enough to make the kid uncomfortable – before striding over to the wall, still with that air of self-possession and ownership that Touya had noticed as they ran.

Yukito pulled off his shirt and left it in a heap at his feet. Then, planting his feet firmly, he placed both of his hands on the slimy concrete and tucked his head down, leaving his bare, bruised neck and back exposed.

"Who wants to go first," the leader said cheerfully, turning to his crew. "Squirmer, turn shit-sucker around. I want him to see this." He waited expectantly, but the only motion was the luckless Squirmer, trying to heave the heavy beam that the poor kid was tied to up off the ground.

"No one?" It was nearly a whisper, but he managed to make it carry. All the kids were staring resolutely at the ground or at their hands. Some were shaking. They were terrified.

"Fine," he hissed, hefting the pipe as if testing its weight. "Then I guess I'll start." He crossed the courtyard in two strides, lifted the pipe above his head, and brought it down on Yuki's unprotected back with all his might.

Yuki's knees buckled, and he jerked under the force of the impact, but he didn't fall and he didn't make a sound. The ringleader spat and brought the pipe up again.

Touya dropped to his knees and grabbed the wall beside him. Horror was drowning him, swirling through his mind in eddies and currents, swamping his brain, clogging his mouth, suffocating his consciousness. He allowed himself three seconds to be overwhelmed – _three blows of that madman's pipe_, he forced himself to think – then caught his breath, pushed the dizzy disgust down, and stood.

He didn't have a plan. He didn't stop to think. He saw a pile of rubble lying forlornly near the corner, picked up a medium sized brick, said a prayer to any god who might be listening, and heaved it into the courtyard.

It was pure luck that the heavy, poorly-thrown missile glanced off the far wall and shattered. The sound was like a gunshot, and for one instant, time froze – the leader with the pipe still raised above his head, Squirmer still with his hands on the heavy beam, frozen in mid-exertion, the rest of the kids frozen solid, as if carved out of ice.

The lead pipe dropped from limp hands, and the spell was broken. "_It's the Master!_" The ringleader shrieked, fear turning him into just a small, scrawny, high-voiced kid. The gang scattered like rats, running in dirty clumps, diving for holes and openings that Touya hadn't even noticed – but even in their frenzied fear, a group of four had the presence of mind to lift the poor kid and his beam off the ground and hustle him back through a window.

Yukito, moving stiffly through the pain, took four uncertain steps in their direction, trying to reach the boy before he disappeared, but halfway across the courtyard his body gave out and he fell to his knees.

"_Soichiro," _he gasped in a carrying groan that reverberated off the walls and came back louder from the echoes.

Touya took a steadying breath and stepped out into the courtyard. Yukito was faced away from him, and he was unsure how to get his attention without scaring him or hurting him.

He shouldn't have worried. No sooner had Touya stepped into the grimy light that Yuki's entire body tensed, shoulders hunched in the unmistakable grim line of someone who has seen something impossible through the back of their head.

"Oh, no," Yukito said, his voice grey and shaken. "Please, God, _no_. I can't – I can't lose you both on the same day."

Touya walked over and knelt beside him. Yukito flinched and turned away, as if afraid that he was going to be hit – a gesture that managed to disturb Touya more deeply than all the nightmares he'd seen already that day.

"Am I going to have to carry you?" he asked finally, making his voice as soft as he could. A moment of stillness, and then Yukito nodded his head fractionally. "Can you direct me home?" Another nod. "Can you make it so that we won't be seen?" A longer pause, but Touya was rewarded with another nod. "Okay. We're going to do this nice and easy…"

It took Touya about a minute and a half of gentle coaxing to get Yuki to wrap his arms around his neck from behind. He had a bad moment then, when his legs buckled under the combined weight of both of their bodies, but he gritted his teeth and made it to standing. He had to bend forward slightly, using gravity to keep Yuki resting across his back, and hooked his arms behind Yuki's knees.

"Do you have the invisibility spell up yet?" Touya asked when they were up and steady.

"Yes," Yukito mumbled through gritted teeth.

"Okay," Touya muttered. "This is going to be a long trip, so pace yourself."

And that was all they spoke for the next few hours, except for the occasional "right" or "left" Yukito gave him in a voice pushed ever-higher in pain. For Touya, the trip was interminable. Each block looked like the last, and each plodding step sent jolts of exhaustion up his spine to his disbelieving brain. For the first hour, his mind swirled and spun the day's events around sickeningly. After that, Touya welcomed the white, yawning nothingness of shock with open arms.

Yukito passed out after two and a half hours. Luckily by then they were only a few miles from home, in an area that Touya knew, in a good neighborhood. The invisibility spell had petered out with Yukito's consciousness, but Touya kept moving straight ahead, avoiding people's glances and ignoring their questions. A few cabs passed, their plush interiors invitingly lit, but Touya ignored them. It would raise too many questions, and anyway his wallet, which had been tucked inside his briefcase, was long gone, lost on that morning's first lunatic chase.

The sun had set by the time Touya found himself standing in front of the inviting, creamy door of his apartment. In a day of nightmares, this moment was the most dream-like of all, and for a few long heartbeats Touya just stared at the familiar numbers, relief and disbelief coursing through his veins like adrenaline. Finally, he managed to fumble the key from his pocket without dropping the load on his back, and pushed the door open.

Touya was blankly surprised that everything looked exactly the same as it had last night - as it had that morning. His briefcase was even there, sitting on the coffee table, a sprig of sakura blossoms tucked conspicuously in the clasp. His entire world had changed, had come crashing down around his ears, so there was no reason to be met with the comfortingly familiar scent of the cleaning agent Yuki always used, no reason to be met with the familiar, frozen faces of his many photographs. There, in the corner, the vase that Sakura had given them for their fifth anniversary, dried pussy-willows and red-buds arranged in an artistic curve. There, on the mantel, was the metal figurine of an angel embracing a man that the two had stumbled upon in an old junk shop on their last vacation. Laughing, they had decided to buy it on the spot. _It's a sign_, Yukito had teased, smiling prettily up at Touya through silvery-fine eyelashes. _Obviously, we were meant to come here_, he had said in a tone of voice that meant that he didn't believe it at all. But still, they had bought the trinket.

Standing here, surrounded by the familiar, comfortable sights and smells, Touya felt more betrayed by the happy memories than he did by the man still lying across his back. Happy memories shouldn't lead to this, he thought furiously. There should have been more warning that something like this was coming – depression, fighting, substance abuse, _anything_.

Walking lightly, trying not to jostle Yukito, and without bothering to turn on any of the lights, Touya picked his way carefully to their bedroom and laid him down gently on the bed. The sudden motion – or rather, the sudden lack of motion – brought Yukito to his senses.

His eyes flew so wide that Touya could see the whites all the way around. He shivered and gasped, and then stilled when his eyes focused on Touya's face as he leaned concernedly over him.

It wasn't the stillness of calm, Touya noted dispassionately, or the stillness of relief, but the tense stillness that comes as you wait for the storm to break.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Touya grunted, and headed for the kitchen to find the first aid kit. Yukito didn't need to worry, he thought to himself grimly as he reached for where the little white box sat on the top shelf. The storm would break all right, but some things were more important even than broken trust.

Touya stripped Yukito down with clinical precision. He rubbed salve into the bruises, washed the cuts with antiseptic, and bandaged Yukito's wounds with soft, medical hands. He helped him to dress and led him into the kitchen and to his seat, touching his lover distantly and impersonally, as he would touch a patient.

He didn't say a word as he cooked Yukito an extra-large bowl of rice porridge, and still remained silent as he watched Yukito eat every bite. As soon as Yukito was done, Touya whisked the bowl away, washed it with the care of someone who is giving a menial task their full attention, and placed it in the dish drainer.

He turned back to Yuki, who was hunched over his hands, staring dully at the bandages that now reached all the way to his wrists. "So," he said. Yuki didn't flinch.

Touya carefully drew his chair, the seat across from Yukito's, and sat down. The kitchen table, the platform of so many jokes, so many conversations, so many meals and shared moments and impromptu love-makings, was in that moment transformed into an impenetrable barricade between them.

"How long have you been seeing him?" Touya asked stiffly. Yukito sighed, a high-pitched whistle that sounded like the steam escaping a kettle.

"A year." His voice barely quavered, and Touya could tell that he was proud of it.

"How long have you been in love with him?" Touya asked, hearing the question dully, as if he wasn't the one who had spoken it.

There was a pause. "I don't know," Yukito whispered finally, barely moving his lips.

"Then how long have you been telling him that you love him?" Touya growled.

"Six months," Yukito answered immediately, still without looking up from his bandaged arms.

"How long have you been fucking him?" Touya asked resignedly, hating himself for putting that question last, for considering that question to be more important than the one that had come before it.

"I haven't been."

"Tell me the truth!"

"I said I haven't been!"

They had both shouted, they had both stood up, they were both leaning heavily on the table and shooting glittering sparks into each other's eyes from across the murky darkness.

"Why should I believe you?" Touya asked finally, breathing heavily from the force of controlling the roar of rage that was fighting to uncoil from beneath the lid of his willpower.

"Why should I lie?" Yukito shot back, eyes gleaming icy amber in the shadows. "Soichiro is a child. I would have gotten no pleasure out of it. And, believe it or not, Kinomoto-san, I _honor_ the promise that I made you to never have anyone but you." Only Yukito could turn words of reassurance into a weapon.

"Who do you love more, then?" Touya growled.

"What?"

"I said, who do you love more?"

Yukito deflated like a life vest, and seemed to crumple into himself.

"Dear God, Touya," he whispered, looking at the ground. "Don't make me choose."

Touya moved suddenly and again Yukito flinched, but by now Touya was so far beyond his threshold of pain that he could barely bring himself to notice. Instead he walked past Yuki, through the living room and into their bedroom, scrabbled momentarily in the drawers, and headed for the front door.

"Will you come back?" Yukito asked brokenly from the kitchen. Touya already had his hand on the front door. The question had been whispered, but it had been carried across the distance on the back of the darkness.

"I'll be home tomorrow," Touya said in a voice totally lacking in inflection, and clicked the door shut behind him.

…

Afterward, Touya was never sure how he had managed to make it to Sakura's house. Already that day he had dragged himself over more than a marathon of miles, he had discovered his beloved's infidelity, he had seen a child so perverted by hatred that Touya was finding it hard to accept his existence, and he had heard and seen torture more brutal than anything he could have possibly imagined.

By the time he made it to the familiar front door in Tomoeda, the shock was wearing off and he was shaking.

He had barely pressed his finger to the doorbell before it was flung open in a clatter of innocent noise that was more soothing to Touya's broken nerves than anything else ever could be. Small, fragile arms were thrown around his neck, Sakura's slim frame surreptitiously bearing the brunt of the weight as Touya sagged into her embrace, before she quickly stepped back, gave Touya a piercing, appraising gaze that stripped him to his very soul, and led him gently to his childhood spot at the kitchen table.

A mug of hot green tea, sweetened with honey, was already steaming in front of his place, and he noticed a decanter of brandy sitting conspicuously out on the counter.

"I'll stick with the tea, thanks," he croaked as he sank gratefully into his chair. Sakura nodded and swept the alcohol back out of sight, the very picture of sisterly efficiency.

"Want anything to eat?" she asked, stepping towards the fridge so purposefully that Touya knew it hadn't been a question.

"No," he said, "but I _need _something to eat. Something kind of easy to digest," he suggested. Sakura hadn't missed a beat, and was already setting the microwave by the time he had finished speaking.

Three minutes later a hot, home-cooked – if re-heated – meal was in front of him, and the gentle bubbling of the human well-spring of joy in the room was bringing some feeling back into his battered soul.

He opened his mouth to ask Sakura a question, but she pre-empted him.

"Eat first," she said firmly, cementing the order with a _look_. "We can talk when you've finished your dinner."

Touya, out of habit, opened his mouth to argue, but quickly turned the movement into one worth the effort by shoving a bite of rice into his mouth. He tried not to wolf the food down, knowing both from personal experience and from his medical classes the result of pushing food too quickly into an empty, over-taxed body. However, the temptation – both to fill his body and to get whatever information Sakura had out of her quickly as possible – was almost more than he could contend with. It felt like ages, but finally he had swallowed the last bite. He laid down his chopsticks and gave his sister a hard glance.

"How much do you know?" he asked. Her mouth pressed together, as it always did when she was worried, and she shrugged.

"I know that something bad happened. I know that you followed him somewhere, and were distracted enough that you lost your briefcase. I know that you saw something that Yukito didn't want either of us to see."

Touya blinked. "_Either _of us to see?" he asked, incredulous. Sakura's frown deepened.

"His connection to me has been closed for – I don't know, weeks. I asked him about it when he first sealed himself off and he just said that there was something that he had to do, alone. He's kept himself open to Kero in case I need him in a hurry, and I've always believed in giving my guardians their due freedom, so I didn't press it. He's open to me again, now." There was a hint of a question in her voice, and Touya waved a dismissing hand in reassurance.

"You did the right thing," he said more firmly than he believed. He sighed, and rubbed his hands over tired eyes when he saw the question on his sister's face.

"It was horrible," he told her after a long moment. "There was this street gang of – of _children_. They had someone hostage. Someone that Yuki loves. He was trying to get him free."

Sakura's eyes widened in shock and recognition. It was a testament to how truly incapacitated Touya was that he totally failed to notice the calculatingly blank look that slipped over her face a moment later. "He's cheating on me, you know," he continued, looking at his hands, voice dripping disgust.

At that, Sakura sat straight up. "_What_?" she demanded. Touya looked up in time to see Sakura's face slip into the glazed, expressionless mask it bore every time his sister stepped into someone else's mind. She was gone for over a minute.

When she returned to her body, every line of her face and silhouette were etched with worry. "No-_o_," she said finally, pointedly looking at everything but Touya. "He wasn't – or at least he doesn't think he was," she continued hurriedly, before her brother's wrath, justified or not, was raised. "Not _cheating_, precisely. But I do think that he hasn't been very honest with you for the past few weeks."

Touya couldn't think of anything to say to that, so instead he stood and began heaving what was quickly becoming so much exhausted, dead weight towards the door.

"Thanks for the food, monster," he said gruffly, but was halted by a gust of disembodied wind caressing his cheek and the audible _click_ of the front door's lock turning.

"You're staying here for the night," Sakura said, rather unnecessarily. "You'll be totally useless unless you get some sleep and another square meal. Besides," there was the glint of a humorless joke in her voice, "if you're planning what I _know_ you're planning, you'll have better luck under cover of daylight."

**Please review! Tell me what you think, it might make me UPDATE faster! **


	2. Of Heroes and Villains

**Part the second. Enjoy!**

Touya swung himself, catlike, through the open window, the first of the things he had taken from his bedroom back home thumping a silent promise against his thigh from where it rested deep in his pocket. He scanned both ends of the hallway keenly before taking off down towards the north wing. He didn't bother to listen for footsteps or to keep to the shadows. Sakura had been right: under cover of daylight, this building was silent and deserted.

The building had probably been a school once, a sad attempt by a long-gone mayor to reform this area of town. The linoleum floor and over-large ceilings had the creepy, fun-house appearance of an institution left to deteriorate. The walls were caked with graffiti, all of it probably more than a decade old, and every few hundred feet, up near the ceiling were the telltale, sinister-looking screws that spoke of fire alarms that had long since been swiped.

In some ways, it was only fitting that this was the place that the Thousand Blows had chosen as their gang hideout – Touya grimaced as his brain forced him to ponder what the little satans got up to with those screws.

Finding the place again had been a nightmare. Touya had blessed Sakura again and again as he made his slow, plodding way through the twisty, forgotten streets of the Tokyo slums. If she hadn't forced him to sleep and eat breakfast – well, lunch actually, considering when Touya woke up – he never would have made it. The journey was physically and emotionally exhausting. Relying primarily on his memories from the day before, Touya forced himself to relive the agonizing moments of yesterday's nightmare as he wound his way back to hell's courtyard.

Even then, he probably would have been caught long ago if not for the _other_ thing that he had brought with him when he left his apartment last night. Absent-mindedly, he fingered the delicate gold chain hiding beneath the collar of his shirt. It had been a joint birthday gift from Sakura and Yueh (Yukito, oddly, hadn't found out about it until Touya had unwrapped it) almost five years ago. Spaced at even intervals, their hooks worked into the chain itself, were seven gold charms, each in the shape of a feather. The craftsmanship on the feathers was so fine that if you held it up to the light you could see the faint outline of each individual barb. But the true value of the gift wasn't in its beauty, magnificent as it was, but in the power that had been steeped and carved into the pendants. Each pendant bore a different magical gift: when Touya wore the necklace, he moved silently, invisibly, and unerringly in the right direction; his vision was magnified; he could see in the dark; and he could see heat through walls. The seventh feather was completely mundane. Sakura and Yue had meant to imbibe it with a shadow of Touya's former second sight, but something in Touya's touch always nullified the spell. Some things you can't get back, the two of them had finally agreed, apologizing and shrugging.

And that, truthfully, wasn't the only magical help that Touya had had. Touya wasn't sure whether Sakura had known of his plans through foresight or through sisterly intuition, but she had spent most of their late breakfast loading him down with information that he might find useful as he carried out his covert mission. For a sheltered girl with mediocre marks in school and no ambition whatsoever to leave her father's house, she sure knew a lot about gangs, Touya had noted, a hint of suspicion glimmering in the back of his mind.

She had been right about the gang seeming to sleep through most of the day, for one thing. For another, she seemed to be right in saying that the gang used this particular building only while they were awake. The only organic flickers of heat that Touya had seen through the walls had been of the low-to-the-ground and scurrying variety. There had been no sign of any humans, yet –

Wait…

There, very faintly, Touya could see a flicker of human heat behind one of the last lengths of cinderblock before the hallway ended. The flicker seemed to grow fainter before his eyes. He would have to move quickly.

He was at the door – definitely a classroom door, as the wood was over two inches thick and the wide, foggy glass was triple-reinforced – in a few quick strides. He tried the handle, and was surprised to find it locked. In one smooth motion, he pulled the magicked pocket knife out of his pocket and flicked the blade out of the handle. He rammed the blade into the locking mechanism with the full force of weeks worth of jealousy and suspicion, and twisted it viciously. He was rewarded with the click of a lock breaking.

The door swung open noiselessly for Touya, and for a moment he stood motionless in the frame. Murky as the hallway had been, the once-classroom was nearly pitch black, and even with the charmed necklace it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the change in light.

As his night-vision kicked in, he realized that the reason for the near-darkness was a double-layer of tarp that had been nailed over the windows. Indistinct shapes swam in front of his vision for a moment, before sorting themselves out into pieces of furniture, heaps of scrap wood and mountains of junk metal. He realized that he was standing in a sort of storeroom, a veritable playground for junk collectors and torturing enthusiasts.

His cat-like vision found movement through the gloom. He took a deep breath and began picking a careful path through the minefield over to where Soichiro lay. As he moved, he tried to mentally prepare himself for what he knew would be a gruesome sight, but still had to shove a hand over his mouth to keep from retching when he saw him.

The kid was lying front down, his face pressed into the grimy linoleum by the heavy beam that was even now strapped across the back of his neck. He was lying in a tepid, rusty puddle of what could only be his own blood and urine. The tarp had mostly been pulled away, probably during the boy's last beating, exposing an oozing, bleeding mass of flesh.

Yukito's injuries looked like nothing compared to what the kid had suffered. The fact that he was still alive was Touya's first clue.

Fighting down the bile, Touya clenched the knife firmly in his right. He was going to enjoy this. This was going to be justice. This was going to feel right. He raised the knife high above his head – higher even than he needed to – and slammed it down with all his might.

The knife sliced through the first bike chain like butter. The boy groaned as his left hand hit the floor. The second bike chain was equally short work. The beam was a little harder, but after about two minutes of heaving and panting, Touya managed to lever it up and off the boy's shoulders.

The sudden shock of having the weight removed and his circulation returned to his hands was enough to somewhat revive the boy. He moaned - a guttural, feral sound - and managed to push himself onto his side, curling into himself so that he was lying in the instinctive position of self-defense. The little light there was seemed to lay on the boy's face oddly, keeping to only the upper half and leaving the lower half in shadow. That was Touya's second clue.

"Hey, kid," Touya said, sinking into a crouch and placing the lightest of featherweight hands on the boy's shoulder. The boy didn't flinch. "Hey, Soichiro," Touya continued. Still the boy made not a move. "I'm going to get you out of here, okay? My name's Touya," he added as an afterthought. At the sound of Touya's name, the boy gasped and tried to jerk upright. It was a pathetic attempt that ended with his head ricocheting back into the floor with an audible crack. Touya winced.

"Okay," he murmured, speaking in the same voice he used to coax Alzheimer's patients and young children to take their medicine. "I'm going to help you sit up, nice and easy." The kid made a valiant attempt to hoist up his own body, but in the end it was almost uniquely the force of Touya's hands that got the boy upright.

"Now," Touya said soothingly, sitting back on his heels and moving his hands slowly and evenly. "You see this overcoat I'm wearing? I'm going to take this off and put it on you, okay?" Touya wrestled off the trench-coat and carefully wrapped it around Soichiro's shoulders. He struggled to get the kid's scrawny, noodle-limp arms through the sleeves, but eventually he had the coat buttoned and belted around the too-thin frame. The sleeves came down well over the poor boy's hands, and Soichiro would have been hard-pressed to walk without tripping over the jacket's hem, but luckily Touya wasn't planning on letting the boy walk anywhere.

"All right. That's good," Touya said encouragingly, some vestige of his sixth sense causing him to listen madly for any sound other than the ragged tatters of their breathing. "Now, this part is hard. I'm going to need to lift you over my shoulder. Have you ever heard of carrying someone fireman style?" Touya left a pause, even though he knew the kid couldn't answer. "Good. That's just how I'm going to carry you. Here it comes now," the kid was as light as a feather, but it was going to be tough to get him all the way back to his father's house in Tomoeda without the boy losing a critical amount of blood.

Touya hurried through the hallways, the sound of his own footsteps and his erratically beating heart pushing him ever faster. Some deep, ancient, primordial sense, deeper even than the sixth sense that Touya had lost, was screaming at him to run, to go, to flee – there was a predator coming, one so stealthy and so dangerous that it could be neither heard nor seen. Touya practically _dived_ out of the broken window he had entered by, and landed running. He was out of the courtyard in a matter of seconds, down the block in less than a minute. Still, Touya's instinct screamed at him to go faster, _faster_, to escape – and in the midst of all this, Soichiro spoke.

"You're the one who loves him." It wasn't a question. Touya, lungs bursting from the lunatic pace he was setting, couldn't find the breath to answer. "I can make us invisible to them for a little while," Soichiro gasped, as if in response to Touya's silence, and then subsided into tooth-gritting agony.

They had only gone a few blocks before Touya's silent nightmare became a reality. Quietly at first, then louder and louder, Touya could hear the insistent patter of many footsteps running full-tilt and getting ever-closer. Touya had a head start, but he was weighed down. Just as he was about to despair, to cry out his rage and his frustration, a wind perfumed with cherry blossoms engulfed him, pushed the scream back, lodged in his throat – suffocated him.

And Touya knew no more.

But just this once, Touya's panic, just anger, and single-minded stubbornness were stronger even than his sister's magic. Touya forced air into his battered lungs and tore his eyes open just as his feet made contact with the front doorstep of his father's house. Sakura was already standing in the open doorway, arms flung out to catch him when he fell.

Out of sheer brotherly obstinacy, Touya staggered but managed to keep his footing. The look of surprise on Sakura's face when she saw that he had fought off her magical chloroform almost made up for the effort it had taken.

"Come in," Sakura said quickly, standing aside to let her brother lurch unsteadily into the house. She knew better than to offer to help. "Put him in there," she indicated the living room. The couch had been made up into a bed, and the full gamut of Sakura's extensive collection of magical and mundane first aid paraphernalia had been lain out across the coffee table.

"How much notice did you have?" Touya managed to wheeze after he had gently placed Soichiro on the couch and tucked the blankets up around his shoulders. He didn't bother stripping the overcoat off of the boy. He had known when he had left the house earlier that afternoon that he wasn't going to be getting it back, and he wasn't sure he could face the gruesome sight of Soichiro's cuts again.

Sakura gazed intently at Soichiro as Touya made him as comfortable as he could. Finally, pulling back to herself with a sigh, she replied.

"I was doing my best to watch you the entire time. I couldn't see very well, though, so I pulled you out a little later than I would have liked to."

Touya didn't know very much about his sister's particular brand of magic, but he did know a lot about Sakura's face and voice when she was trying to hide something from him. He briefly considered calling her out, but knew that he didn't have the strength for a fight. Reaching up, he fished the necklace out from beneath his shirt and lifted it over his head. There was a moment where he felt like a veil had been thrown over his head as his senses dimmed, but he blinked and the feeling was gone. He shoved the necklace into his pocket.

"I'd better head out," he muttered. Not even he could pretend that he sounded at all excited about going home. Sakura looked up sharply.

"You're _going_?" she asked, aghast. "You _can't_ go. I need you to patch him up after I do a magic scan! It would be _much_ too dangerous to have another doctor look at him! …Oh, oops," she whispered as soon as it was said. Touya's eyebrows raised.

"So I was right," he said after he had allowed her to stew for a few moments. "He _is_ a construct." Sakura nodded without meeting his eyes.

A construct was the technical term for a living creature born entirely of magic. Only seven or eight were supposed to exist in the world: Yueh and Keroberos, Spinel and Ruby Moon, and Touya knew that Yuuko had at least three skulking around her shop. Making a construct was a fine art taught to only the best and most responsible magicians. The secret had been handed down by word of mouth through the ages, but few masters had ever dared to create life. The secret was supposed to have died with Clow.

"And he's a new one," Touya said, reading the answer off of Sakura's face.

"I'm going to have to tell you all about it now, aren't I," she said softly, still looking at her feet. In that moment, mind and soul as battered as it was, even amidst the suspicion and betrayal he was facing on all sides, his heart went out to her. For the first time Touya noticed the deep lines around her laughing eyes and youthful mouth, and noticed the tired, hollow ring to her voice.

"Hey," he said, reaching out a hand and squeezing her shoulder. "You should have just told me in the first place. _I_ know what kinds of trouble you get up to when you don't tell your big brother what's going on." Sakura did her best to smile for him.

"You… know that Clow wrote everything down," Sakura began. Touya's heart sank at the words.

"Oh, _no_," he groaned.

"Oh, yes." Sakura looked grim. "Someone broke into Eriol's house and stole one of Clow's journals."

"When did this happen?"

"Almost a year and a half ago," Sakura said wretchedly. Touya's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Eriol said that he wasn't exactly sure what the journal contained. His memories have gotten… fuzzy since the power transfer. But… he said he knew that it was the journal Clow had been writing in when he created Yueh."

Touya winced. "So it's like an instruction manual?"

"Worse. Eriol said he thinks it might be a template." She paused, and gave Touya a searching look. "Oh, very well. I may as well tell you, now. It is very unlikely that the person who is using the journal has Clow's power or his sense of responsibility. We don't… we think he's manufacturing constructs from existing human souls."

Touya blinked. He knew enough about Yueh's creation to know that he had been chained to Yukito's soul before Yukito had actually been born. Even then, as an added precaution, Clow had left them both to sleep in the book to stabilize and grow accustomed to each other. Surely she couldn't be saying… "You don't mean that he's using normal people off the street and turning them into constructs?"

He had never seen his sister look so grim. "I do. I think I'll find that Soichiro was a normal person until about a year and a half ago."

Touya gaped at her, mouth hanging open in totally unabashed horror. "That's sickening," he finally managed to growl. Sakura waved her hand, a gesture that could be interpreted both as an acknowledgment or a dismissal. It occurred to Touya that if _he_ thought it was sickening, the feeling could only be stronger for someone absolutely rotten with magical empathy.

"Dad's home," she said unnecessarily, clearly indicating that the conversation was over. Touya was grateful for it. "He finished his dig in Argentina yesterday and came home while you were gone. I think he's in the kitchen. He said he wanted to make dinner."

Touya nodded and left the room. He didn't really feel like being anywhere close by when Sakura found whatever she was going to find on the poor, perverted once-human.

Touya did find his father in the kitchen, and once again his brain rebelled against the impossible contrast of the ghoulish sights and ideas of the living room and the happy, bustling den of normality that was his father in the kitchen. Fujitaka looked more comfortable in an apron than he did in the suits he wore to teach classes at the university, and now, back in his element, he hummed and prattled happily to the air as he worked.

"Hey there, Dad," Touya called over the noise of vent fans and boiling water. Fujitaka looked up from his cutting board, a surprised and delighted smile playing across his features. "Hi, Mom," Touya added to the air, nodding at a patch of nothing that he knew from experience _probably_ contained his mother's shade.

"Touya!" Fujitaka cried, dropping his knife and turning to greet his son properly. He stopped himself mid-stride, the smile trickling off his face. "What's wrong?" he asked after a moment.

Touya paused to consider the question. The past ten minutes alone had provided him with any number of true answers, but instinctively Touya knew that his father was seeing past all that. _What's wrong_, he had asked, but _What's __**really**__ wrong_ is what he had meant. _What is it that's skulking beneath your soul, siphoning away your heart's strength? What is it that's hiding behind your worst nightmares, using them to cloud your vision?_

"Yuki's cheating on me, Dad." Touya answered heavily.

Fujitaka blinked. "Was, or is still?"

Touya considered the question carefully before answering. "Was."

"Do you think he'll do it again?"

Again, Touya had to carefully think through his answer, running it first through the nasty, baby dragon that his jealousy and suspicion had created, then through his naturally optimistic soul. "No."

Fujitaka frowned, and looked his son full in the face. "Can you forgive him?" he asked, worry clear in every syllable.

Touya opened his mouth to answer automatically, but shut it when he saw the concern in his father's eye. Carefully, he weighed the question, measuring it from every possible aspect and angle. After the longest pause of all, he answered, "Yes."

Fujitaka's smile melted back onto his face as if it had never been gone. "Well, that's all right, then," he said happily, and finished crossing the kitchen to give his son a hug.

Touya tried to hide it – because he was Touya, not because he actually thought he could fool anyone in this family – but the short exchange had lifted a weight the size of continents off of Touya's heart and mind. He felt lighter than he had in days, maybe even weeks.

"Thanks, Dad," he whispered into his father's shoulder. "Mom," he added, as he imagined a feather-soft touch against his cheek.

The touching scene was interrupted by a scream from the other room.

Touya and Fujitaka ran into the living room to find Sakura in a crumpled heap next to the couch. Touya moved to help her up, but she jerked herself upright so quickly that Touya stumbled in surprise, and jackrabbited out of the room.

A moment later, the two men heard the sound of retching.

Touya turned to look an appraising eye up and down Soichiro, but he didn't seem to have moved, even amidst all the commotion. Touya spared a glance for his father, and found that he, too was gazing deeply at the boy, a hint of disgusted fascination trailing across his face.

"Honey?" Fujitaka called once the retching had stopped. "Are you all right?"

There was a grunt from the direction of the bathroom, and a moment later Sakura stumbled into sight. She paused at the doorway, leaning against the frame.

"It's _hideous_," she moaned, wiping her mouth.

"What is?" Fujitaka and Touya asked, nearly at the same time.

"His _aspect_," Sakura moaned, her hands finding her eyes after they were done with her mouth. "His power source. It's _disgusting_." Touya and Fujitaka waited for her to continue. "It's… it's _decay_," she finally managed. She was groping for words. "Decomposition. The process of complex mass breaking down into simple matter for the benefit of fungus and parasites." She shivered. "It's _brilliant_. Everything decays. His energy supply is nearly limitless. He's much stronger than Ruby Moon, probably more powerful than Yueh would be if he wasn't chained to me and Kero. But… it's a perversion of the soul of the magic. Using decay to create complex life – it's sickening."

Touya saw her try to pull herself back together, but she was shaking. "Besides that, I found what I expected to find. His soul was shorn just over a year ago. The transformation couldn't have been pleasant, but he seems stable now, at least."

Fujitaka had drifted closer to his daughter as she had been speaking, and now offered her a comforting arm, which she gratefully took.

"Do you want me to patch him up now?" Touya asked dully. Sakura drew a shuddering breath and nodded.

"I'm sorry," she added hopelessly. Touya gave her a half-shrug.

"If you could do that, I can do this," he replied.

Touya forced his mind away from the task at hand and let his hands do the work they were trained for. This was both a blessing and a curse. While Touya didn't have to examine the marks of the brutal torture and desecration that his beloved's beloved had suffered, his tired brain relentlessly slogged through the trenches of the last two days, sorting and sifting information until it lay flat.

"Do you think there are more of these things?" Touya asked dispassionately as he worked. He couldn't even muster the energy for any more horror.

"I'm nearly sure of it," Sakura answered heavily from the floor. She was lying with her head in Fujitaka's lap. Their father was sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wall, watching Touya's strong, clever hands in the absent way of one deep in thought and stroking Sakura's hair soothingly. Touya grunted.

"I think the leader of their gang is one of them, as well," he said. A poorly-made construct would explain the super-sonic mood swings and lunatic instability.

Some time later, he asked, "Do you think Soichiro's other form is ugly?"

"No," Sakura's answer was heavy with bitterness. "Even _bad_ magic looks beautiful to human eyes."

At long last Touya had set and splinted the last broken bone – the fourth metatarsal, in the foot – and had bandaged the last wound. His eyes found the clock over the mantel piece, and he winced. It was nearly eight o'clock. He had promised Yukito he'd be home today.

"I need to get going," he said, walking into the bathroom to wash and disinfect his hands.

"What?" Sakura cried, sounding appalled. There was a scuffling of sound from the other room as Sakura and Fujitaka both crawled to their feet.

"You _have_ to stay for dinner," Fujitaka added to his daughter's cry. "I _insist_."

Touya carefully turned off the water and dried his hands. Then, grinning, he made his way back out to the kitchen.

"Okay, then," he said, finding comfort in the fact that his family's antics could always make him smile. "If you insist."

…

In the end, it was twenty to midnight when Touya finally got in on the last train. He was greeted by a silent, dark apartment, but there was a light shining in the kitchen. He drifted over, feeling as helpless and pointless as a moth.

He found a note carefully arranged at the center of a spotless table.

_Touya, _it read,

_I left some dinner in the fridge for you when – _there was a shaky splotch over the first leg of the w, as if he had begun to write _if_ and then thought better of it – _you get home tonight. Two minutes in the microwave should be fine. I'll sleep on the couch tonight so you can have the bedroom. Don't worry about waking me when you get in. I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well._

_Yukito_

The first half of the loop of the Y was too-vertical, as if Yukito had begun to write "love" and changed it at the last second. Touya put the note back and opened the fridge. He was still full from the rich meal his father and sister had forced on him, but he recognized a peace offering when he saw it.

As the food was warming, he walked to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

"Are you asleep?" He asked quietly, too low to wake a sleeper.

"No," Yukito responded, speaking just as quietly as Touya. He didn't sound happy to be called out.

"Are you trying to?" Touya asked flatly. Yukito sighed and pushed himself upright.

"Not really," he admitted, turning on the main ceiling lamp with a flick of his fingers. Touya raised his eyebrows surreptitiously. Yukito, as a general rule, tried to avoid overt uses of his magic.

"I got Soichiro," Touya said, ignoring the beeping of the microwave timer behind him. Yukito turned blank eyes on him. "I got Soichiro out of that place," Touya repeated. "I got him to Sakura." There were stormy clouds forming in Yukito's eyes. "I thought you'd be pleased," Touya said, keeping his face and expression carefully neutral.

"_Are you insane?_" Yukito hissed, his voice calm through the maelstrom of feeling building behind his eyelids. "They very possibly know where we live!"

Touya waved this away. "I got Sakura to raise the protection on the apartment," he said dismissively, turning back into the kitchen.

"_Sakura's magic won't help_." Yukito said it so quietly, so matter-of-factly that for a moment Touya was sure that he'd imagined the words.

"W-what?" he asked finally, once Yukito's expression had proven to him that he hadn't slipped into a dream. "I know that their leader is a construct, but –"

"They're all constructs!" Yukito interrupted him. He was angry now, angry enough to let it show in his face and in his voice. The forced calm was blown away in tattered rags. "All thirty-two of them are magical constructs made off of Clow's template for _me_! Sakura is the most powerful magician in _Japan_, possibly in all of Asia, but we don't know who they've been training in London and Paris and New York! And even if there was no master-mind behind them, do you really think that I could – that _she _could – that _anyone could take on thirty-two self-sustaining constructs and win?_ Why do you think I didn't just transform into Yueh and blitz the place to begin with?" Something about Touya's expression worked its way through Yukito's terrified, buzzing rage, and he visibly clamped down.

"I'm sorry," he said carefully after a few deep breaths. "You didn't know what you were doing. I shouldn't have lost my temper. But Touya, that was a very stupid thing for you to have done. I don't think I… Look, I'm not sure… Oh, god. Touya, I am not strong enough to protect you from this." He tried to stare Touya down as he said it, tried to get him to understand the enormity of what was taking place, but Touya wasn't paying attention. His eyes were looking in his direction, but he was looking _through_ Yukito, at the mind and the motives behind his pretty amber eyes.

"You were going to let him die," he croaked. Yukito pursed his lips.

"It was a worst case scenario," he said, without a trace of guilt.

"You were going to _let him die in there_," Touya repeated, tasting the words as if they were in a foreign language.

Yukito snapped. "I would only have let him die if it took his life in addition to mine to ensure your safety!" He roared, eyes flashing molten amber and silver ice. Touya began moving almost before Yukito had finished speaking. He cleared the living room in two strides, grabbed Yukito by the collar, and dragged him so close that Touya could _see_ the silver-fine hair at the side of Yuki's head sway from the force of Touya's breath.

"_You'll die when I say you can_," he hissed ferociously. Something in him – something carnal and ancient, something that had no place in modern human life but that had been helping Touya to survive the nightmares of the past two days – was pleased by the hint of fear shining in Yukito's eyes. Something in him wanted to make that hint shine even stronger. Touya half-threw, half-shoved Yukito onto the couch, where the other man lay still. Glittering eyes found Touya's and held them for a long moment – seven seconds, just long enough to prove he could hold Touya's gaze indefinitely – and then the eyes closed, his head went back to expose a long, creamy neck, and he lengthened and straightened his body across the couch.

Touya took him then, hard and fast, not sparing any consideration for the wounds that Touya had so recently cared for. He got no pleasure out of it, but he did get relief, and the way that Yukito's body moved under his own, fighting tooth and claw to keep time and shuddering and gasping under his touch, was more reassuring than any number of pretty speeches Yukito could have made.

When he was done, he pushed himself off of him without a word. Yukito curled up his legs accommodatingly to give Touya room to sit on the end of the couch. Now that their love-making was done, they were careful not to touch each other.

"I shouldn't have done that," Touya said after a long silence, each word creaking and grinding its way out from somewhere far, far away. "That was wrong of me. Dishonest of me."

Yukito sat bolt upright. He tried to say something and realized half-way through that no words were coming out. He coughed, licked dry lips with a sandpaper tongue, and tried again.

"You're not leaving me, are you?" he asked. It sounded like a whimper even to his ears. Touya shook his head slowly.

"No-o… but there are… conditions."

Yukito crumpled with relief. Touya could tell that he was saying something, and leaned forward to hear it.

"Thank God," Yukito was murmuring, over and over again. "Thank God. Thank God."

"You have to let me tell you the conditions and agree to them first," Touya reminded him, but a hint of a smile was playing with the corners of his lips. It was the first time that Yukito had made him smile for a long, long time.

"Shoot," Yukito said, still in the same tone of voice, still lying flat on his back and staring at the ceiling as if in an attitude of rapture.

"You have to agree to see a relationship councilor with me for six months."

"Done." Yukito hardly missed a beat. Touya's eyebrows raised a little at that. It was an old argument: Touya would insist that their relationship could benefit from a professional perspective, and Yukito would maintain that their lives were too complicated to bring an outsider into it. The only argument older than that one was the should-we-adopt-a-child fight, which resurfaced almost every month, without fail. Touya had begged Yukito, _pleaded_ with him to adopt a child, but Yukito was steadfastly against it. "How can I raise a child when I never had a childhood?" Yukito would ask. "I don't want to involve some poor, innocent kid with the complex freefall of my existence." And then the argument would be over.

Yukito seemed to be waiting patiently. "And?" he finally prompted.

"Huh? That's it," Touya said. Yukito blinked. Then, against all probability, he burst out laughing.

He didn't just laugh. He _roared_, his bare abdomen tensing and rippling with the effort, tears streaming from his eyes, lungs laboring for breath in between the loud guffaws.

"Sorry," he gasped when he finally had breath, using shaking hands to wipe the tears off of his face. "I'm sorry. It wasn't funny. I was just laughing from relief and amazement."

"Amazement?" Touya asked. Yukito's eyes crinkled at him from the other side of the couch.

"Amazement that at the end of these two days, you're still prepared to forgive me," Yukito said promptly, love and admiration gleaming in his eyes and in his voice. "God, how I l-" but he stopped himself, and the happy smile was replaced with the sadness of ages.

He cleared his throat. "Well," he said smartly. "There will be plenty of time for that later, I suppose." Touya looked down. "I'm going to ask that you retire now," Yukito continued, giving Touya a small fake smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I need to sleep, and you'll distract me if you stay out here."

Touya nodded, and stood, and gathered his clothes. He paused for a beat, giving deference to the moment where he would normally kiss Yukito goodnight. Then he gave an awkward half-wave and disappeared behind the bedroom door.

Yukito wasn't to know that Touya stood with his back to the door for a long, long time, and finally muttered, "I love you too," before he went to the bed.

Touya wasn't to know that Yukito staid up for hours after Touya had turned off his own light, gazing into the distance and whispering charms of luck and protection that cast a silver sheen across the silence. Just before his eyes slid shut of their own accord, they focused blearily on a black-and-purple butterfly which seemed to have materialized in front of him, fluttering tantalizingly before his vision before disintegrating into a small, scrubby piece of paper which landed lightly in his lap.

Yukito lifted it up to his eyes. Written in unmistakable spidery script were the words:

Receipt

Purchased… The protection of one Kinomoto Touya, and family

Purchased…. The protection of one Takahashi Soichiro, and guardians

Payment….. The trust of one Kinomoto Touya

Payment….. The memories possessed by one Takahashi Soichiro of one Tsukishiro Yukito

Paid In Full.

For the second time that day, the only thing Yukito could do was laugh.

**Review, and I'll see you next time!**


	3. A New Perspective

**A/N: AAAAAAAAAAAH I forgot to update. Sorry :'( I was moving back in to school, and got distracted. I'll give you a double header this time, to make up for it. Updates will be every two days from now on. Ennnnnjoy!**

Yukito, needless to say, was having a bad week. Actually, horrible as the week had been, Yukito was having a bad _year_, and this past week had just seemed like the logical progression of the fiery down spiral that had become his life. The problems had all started last November, when that damned journal that Clow had been foolish enough to keep his notes in had turned up missing. Stunned and confused, Yukito had kept the rush of emotions that accompanied this revelation locked away from those he loved, thinking he'd have time to sort through the muddled mess of guilt and shaken sense of identity later, on his own. But hardly two weeks later he had stumbled across the first new construct, and had found himself both fascinated and disgusted by the fractured, broken boy. Worried by how his loved ones would react if he began to explain the strange, powerful draw that the construct had over him, he took the path of least resistance and simply told no one. However, as time went on and his relationship with the construct deepened – and more and more new constructs were generated – virtually everyone found out about Soichiro. Everyone, that is, except Touya.

At first, he kept Soichiro's existence from his lover out of embarrassment and shame that such an abomination had been created on his model. He worried about what Touya might see, reflected in the splintered shards of Soichiro's once-soul. But the deceit weighed heavily on his mind, and before he knew it the situation had entered a vicious cycle, with Yukito lying to Touya in order to cover the tracks of his guilty conscience. Before long, every day was an agony of shame and the fear of discovery. There had been a point, almost two months ago, when Yukito had finally decided that he needed to come clean, even if it meant facing his lover's wrath and disgust – but no sooner had he firmed up his resolve for the conflict, that Soichiro joined that damned gang of constructs, and suddenly Yukito found himself lying to Touya in order to save his life.

Yukito, as the model of all the new constructs, the oldest among them and the most powerful, was an object of fear and loathing to the gang. He was never sure how much information Soichiro had been forced to give them, but as soon as he joined the gang he knew that his own safety, and by extension Touya's, was in a state of uncertainty. Yukito's behavior around his lover, already erratic because of the strain of keeping his guilty conscience hidden, became even more unpredictable – which only made it more important that he keep the situation from Touya. He had known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if Touya found out about his dishonesty he would be pushed to do something rash – and Touya would be an easy, desirable target for the vicious gang of children.

So he had tried his best to manage the forces that were, by that point, totally outside his control. And of course, he had failed. It had almost been a relief when Touya finally knew it all, although he had been surprised at how quickly his lover dubbed an entirely platonic relationship an 'affair.'

And that was how Yukito found himself sitting in this waiting room, legs crossed, arms folded, as cold and composed as any king. He would never know how Sonomi had managed to get them an appointment with her psychologist already. Touya had called her yesterday, Sunday, for her recommendation, less than twelve hours after Yuki had agreed to see a therapist. Sonomi, being Sonomi, not only recommended her exceptional personal therapist, but also promised that she'd find a way to bypass the normal waiting list and get them in to see her this week. By luck, the doctor had had a cancellation this morning and had agreed to an appointment at ten-thirty, which had suited both men fine. Touya's residency hours didn't start until the afternoon on Mondays anyway, and Yukito simply took the morning off of work. When he had called in on Friday, he had said that he might take almost a week off, anyway.

In contrast to Yuki's icy composure, next to him Touya was a jittering ball of nerves, clearly uncomfortable in this big, crowded, public waiting room. Of course, Yuki reflected idly as he felt Touya shift his weight next to him for the fifth time in less than a minute, he might not have found himself sitting quite so stiffly if he hadn't recently been brutally beaten with a lead pipe – but mostly, he knew, his rigidity sprang from how unhappy he was to be here.

It wasn't that he was opposed to therapy or marriage counseling in general, it was just that he knew that it could never work for him, personally. Explain to a psychiatric professional that he still bore deep emotional trauma from discovering that his grandparents had never existed? Explain the carefully repressed resentment he held against Yueh for commandeering his body, mind, and heart – for forcing him to mourn for Clow even as he loved Touya, for appropriating his body and tempting Touya to follow him into often mortal danger? Explain the confusion he felt at owing his primary allegiance not to his lover and partner, but to his Master? He'd be institutionalized before you could say 'Clow Guardian.'

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a stooped, graying, just-over-middle-aged Japanese woman peer around the corner of the hallway from where the examination rooms were housed – Yuki glanced at the clock and noted it was exactly 10:29 – before a pleasantly grizzled voice called, "Kinomoto-san and Tsukishiro-san?"

Touya nearly sprang to his feet, the nervous energy he had been accumulating for the past sixteen minutes uncoiling in one sudden motion. Yukito, on the other hand, stretched the seconds by meticulously replacing the magazine he had been looking at – a fashion magazine which he hadn't been so much reading as scanning for any new photographs of Sakura's modeling jobs – before heaving himself jerkily vertical, wincing as his bruised muscles stretched into new and painful positions.

The air between Touya and he, Yukito noticed as Touya waited impatiently for him to haul his beaten body out of the chair, usually softer and lighter than other air, now crackled with dense tension. It made him feel scratchy and cranky and oddly frozen, and a headache was building up behind Yuki's eyes.

The room that they were ushered into was comfortable and spacious, and was decorated rather like their living room at home. Yukito felt Touya relax slightly, surrounded by leather upholstery and bookshelves – both things that reminded him of his father. Personally, Yukito would have been happier if the floor was linoleum and the walls antiseptic white. This was a doctor's office, after all, and he didn't like the implication that he was supposed to be making himself comfortable.

Dr. Kobayashi sat down smilingly and motioned them both into their seats.

"We really appreciate you seeing us on such short notice," Touya mumbled jerkily as soon as he was down, Yukito still trying to hide his winces of pain as he lowered himself into his chair. Touya was still operating in that nervous, spring-like way. "I hope that Sonomi wasn't too forceful with her request…"

Dr. Kobayashi smiled at the earnest, well-intentioned young man. Yukito, once he was finally seated, kept his eyes coldly on the bookshelf just over the doctor's right shoulder, his arms crossed in a position that even _he_ knew was defensive.

"Not at all," she replied. Yukito was irrationally irritated that her smile reached her eyes. "How are you acquainted with Sonomi?"

"She's my Aunt – ah, she and my mother were cousins," Touya corrected himself. Dr. Kobayashi's face opened in recognition.

"Ah! I was wondering. No, don't worry about Sonomi. She's been my patient for a very long time. She wouldn't still be seeing me if I were a push-over."

Touya nodded, looking relieved, and Yukito suddenly had a savage desire to wipe the look off of his lover's face. Something cold and hard and _nasty_ had worked its way to the forefront of Yukito's mind, and taking pleasure in the pointless cruelty of the thing, Yukito suspended Touya's small comfort.

"We should introduce ourselves," he said. It wasn't a snap, but it was as cold and brutal as ice. _This is professional,_ the frozen daggers in his voice made clear. _Professional, not personal._ "I'm Tsukishiro Yukito."

Touya paused for a moment, giving Yukito a hard stare that was more concerned than angry. Yukito chose to ignore it. "Kinomoto Touya," he finally muttered, glancing at the psychologist as he said it, to see if she had taken offense. Dr. Kobayashi had fixed her eyes on Yukito.

It wasn't a glare or a frown or anything else on the cold side of polite. It was merely a quizzical stare, the kind that could be maintained indefinitely. It was the kind of look that Yukito himself often used when he was confronted with a domineering pig, just to prove that he could hold their gaze for as long as he liked. Feeling like a fool, Yukito glared over the top of his wire frames into the psychologist's eyes, daring her to turn it into a contest of wills.

Of course, she didn't take the bait. He never did either.

"My name is Kobayashi Rikako," Dr. Kobayashi said firmly, after a pause that was only a moment longer than was comfortable. "You both are welcome to call me Rikako. I'm very pleased to meet you both. So, tell me," her voice was gracious and inclusive, but so long as Yukito maintained the glare, it was clear that she was speaking only to him, "what brings you to me today?"

"I was unfaithful to my partner," Yukito said bluntly, hoping that this opening would shock a reaction out of the woman, and he took a kind of brutal satisfaction in watching Dr. Kobayashi's face go carefully blank.

A moment later her neutrally sympathetic mask was back in place. "I understand that this will be very hard for you," she said calmly. "But it is necessary for me to know the facts of the indiscretion in order for me to help you."

"I -" Yukito hissed, but he clamped down just in time. For just a moment he had heard a strange, metallic bite on his lips, and when he had glanced over he had seen a glittering, darkening aura reflected in Touya's eyes. With all the tempered strength of resinite, Yukito forced the magic that had been coursing through his veins back behind his conscious mind. He felt himself shrink, and the world around him grow, as he dammed the power that had been pulsing around him, lending him that inhuman, icy composure. It left him feeling as if ash were in his veins, not blood. Emotion followed weakness, and Yukito felt blood rush to his face as his sense of shame kicked in on overdrive. He always forgot the consequences of relying on Yueh's magic for strength in stressful situations. "I am so sorry," Yukito said instead. His voice was warm, and shallow, and just a pitch lower than people expected, and entirely mundane.

"I am very, very sorry for my _inexcusable _rudeness," he continued, giving himself a mental jab to the ribs. Dr. Kobayashi's face had taken on that expression of studied blankness again. It could be a picture in a textbook, Yukito mused. _Woman Hiding Her Emotions. _Or maybe _Doctor Analyzing a Troubling Subject_. Yukito couldn't blame her for being surprised at his sudden change in demeanor. Touya, who was used to Yukito relying more or less heavily on his icy, moonlit magic depending on the time, just looked relieved. Yukito was about to give him a reassuring smile when he remembered what the therapist had asked him. Swearing internally, he removed his glasses under the pretense of rubbing his eyes. The story would be easier to tell if he didn't have to see the carefully neutralized rainbow of emotions arching across the poor woman's face.

"I'm a medical anthropologist," Yukito began lamely. He hoped he didn't sound like he was changing the subject. "I work for a foundation whose mission is to bring healthcare to those who fall through the cracks of the system. I do field research with communities that are under-served." Here he paused, sneaking a glance at Touya. He had lost track, over the past three days, how much of this Touya had been told or guessed, but he was nearly positive that he didn't know this next detail.

"Just over a year ago, I began working with an orphan population in Kabuki-cho." True to form, Yukito felt Touya stiffen next to him. The Red Light District wasn't dangerous, precisely, but Yuki's attractive force was strong enough that Touya always encouraged him to avoid the area. He shrugged off the sick, anxious feeling he always got when he knew that Touya was upset with him, and continued on, as bravely as he could. "During the course of my research I became deeply… _involved_ with one of my consultants. A resilient, resourceful, beautiful boy - _teenager_. Named Soichiro. I…" Yukito closed his eyes for just a moment, taking the time to banish the suddenly overwhelming feelings of love and regret, "cared for him very deeply. And, a month later, when the foundation axed the funding for the project, I… kept seeing Soichiro.

"I wanted… I wanted him to have a place – a person – to come to, and to trust. I wanted him to have some memories with me that he would truly treasure. I wanted to be with him as much as possible." Yukito stopped, and grimaced, and took a breath. That last had sounded beseeching, even to him. When he continued again, it was in his best imitation of a low, impersonal voice. "I saw him… usually twice a week. Sometimes more. I took him places. Bought him things. I spent a lot of money and had a good time."

Here, Yukito had to stop to collect himself. While none of this was easy for him to say, telling the next part of the story would be a little like standing in a bed of hot coals. He reached up again to rub his eyes and try to massage the headache out of his temples, but this time he kept his head resting in his hands.

"Two months ago Soichiro made the ill-informed decision to join a gang. I found out about it the day after his initiation, and… felt terrible. He hadn't dropped a word, hadn't called me, hadn't consulted me in any way. And… it came just after a period of time where I was – ah – _preoccupied." _Yukito allowed his voice to shake on the word. He didn't think he could have said it if he hadn't. He was glad that his hands were covering his eyes, so that Touya couldn't see the badly contained tears. "I was furious. And culpable. I _demanded _that he leave immediately. I think it was the first time Soichiro had seen me really angry. I _know_ it was the first time he had seen me yell. I nearly tra- I nearly really lost my head," Yukito corrected himself at the last second, knowing it was a poor substitute, wondering if Dr. Kobayashi and Touya could hear the bile rising in his throat. "I was stupid. If I had just taken him with me then, I probably could have handled it. As it was I was the last person in the world that Soichiro trusted, and I was yelling at him. Of _course_ he ran off. A brain-dead _stuffed animal_ could tell you that he would run off."

Yukito was silent for a long moment. He could feel Touya becoming restful beside him, eager for him to continue and have this ordeal be done with, and forced himself to drag his manic regrets into some sort of articulable order. "I got a call from him the next day. Things were… bad. Apparently, he had tried to leave the gang when I told him to, but they were demanding the blood price. You know, 'The only way you're getting out of here is in a long, thin box'?

"I have some experience with gangs for my work. And this particular group of punks, well... Let's just say I had something that they wanted. I got them to agree to a trade: my blood for his life and freedom, which they decided was fair. They got to beat me bloody five times and I got to take Soichiro away with just a few bruises and sprains. A win-win situation," Yukito shaped the words delicately, allowing them to roll off his tongue. At least Touya seemed to appreciate the sarcasm. What he could see of Dr. Kobayashi looked non-plussed, and Yukito cleared his throat nervously, wondering what she would look like if had told her the _real_ conditions.

"After the third time I went down there to get the shit knocked out of me Touya cottoned on. He followed me the fourth time, didn't like what he saw, and interrupted." He could feel something dark gathering at the corners of Touya's psyche, and waved a mollifying hand in his direction. "It was all the better that you did," Yukito forced himself to say dispassionately. "They had gotten themselves all worked up into a tizzy over something. They probably would have tried to kill me just out of spite. And they certainly would have killed Soichiro.

"Touya _heroically_ went back the next day and rescued him," Yukito couldn't keep the bite in his voice down, couldn't stop it from scalding white-hot across his tongue. The flash of pain that rippled across Touya's aura made him instantly regret it, but the after-image that his terrified fury had left on his soul in that moment demanded to be bled off somehow. "That was – oh – day before yesterday. And now we're here."

Yukito reached over and pulled his glasses off the side table and slipped them back over his nose. Dr. Kobayashi's disconcertingly neutral face had slipped off sometime while he was speaking, and she was now looking at him with brightly sympathetic, deeply pitying eyes.

It is a testament to the strength of Yuki's character that he didn't begin to hate her in that moment.

"Thank you for telling me all that," she said finally, her voice low in a studied improvement of real sincerity. "That must have been very hard for you to share. And you to hear," she added, including Touya with a sweep of her bespectacled gaze. "I thought we would have a little more time today – I would like, at some point, to do just a general interview of you both so that I can get to know your situation a little bit better. For right now, though, we only have a few minutes left, so I'd like you both to fill out these surveys."

Yukito had a heavy, yellow packet pushed into his hands, shortly followed by a pen, and found himself raising an eyebrow in consternation. The first question was, _On a scale of 1-5, how enthusiastic are you about counseling?_ The second was, _On a scale of 1-5, how enthusiastic are you about continuing your relationship?_

But it was really only the last question that caused him to truly worry, and that was, _If I could change any three things about my partner, they would be:_ _. He struggled with it for a long time, and in the end left it mostly blank, wondering all the while what Touya was writing down next to him. In the end they turned in their questionnaires at almost exactly the same time, and Yukito had to fight the urge to sneak a glance over Touya's.

"Thank you very much," Dr. Kobayashi said, carefully placing the surveys into a manila folder. "Now, my recommendation is that you both have individual therapy sessions with me every week, in addition to a weekly group session. But, I understand that you, Tsukishiro-san, work for a nonprofit, and that you, Kinomoto-san, are a medical student?" she trailed off delicately.

"Money isn't an object," Touya said instantly. Yukito hesitated only fractionally before nodding his agreement – most of their wealth was actually his, Yukito having been left most of the money in Clow's estate, but Touya so rarely asked for anything that he was not about to argue. Dr. Kobayashi relaxed.

"Good," she said firmly. "Would this time be convenient for our weekly group sessions?" Again, Touya agreed immediately. Yukito took a moment to deliberate, hesitant to sign over one of the most productive times of the work week, but the look in Touya's eyes won the day.

"Of course," he muttered quietly, carefully looking anywhere but into his partner's eyes. "I work very flexible hours. Any time is fine."

"Then Tsukishiro, why don't the two of us meet on Tuesday afternoons? Let's say one o'clock?" Again, Yukito found himself agreeing contrary to his own judgment. He could take an extended lunch break on Tuesdays, after all.

"And you, Kinomoto-san… hm. This might be trickier. Would you be available to come to my _house_ on Thursday evenings? I also have a practice there."

It was settled immediately, and the interview was over. They were silent as they were shown out of the office and crossed through the awkward waiting room, but at least, Yukito reflected, the silence was merely overcast, rather than electric.

"That was embarrassing," Yukito finally mumbled in the privacy of the elevator. Touya didn't need to ask to know what he was talking about.

"I know," he said simply. "Can't you control yourself better than that?"

If there had been even the barest hint of reproach in Touya's voice, or if he had voiced it as a demand or order, Yukito would have shot him down instantly. But as it was… he was no match for the deep, quiet, and above all _hesitant_ anxiety that was glimmering in his love's eyes.

He hissed his breath out between his teeth for what felt like a long, long time. "I'll try," he finally said, feeling wretched. "It's the best I can do."

To Yuki's surprise, Touya reached over and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze just as the elevator door was sliding open.

"I know you will," was all he said, for the first time in days with a true wrinkle of love in his voice. It made Yukito feel more wretched still, because he knew that once again he had lied.

…

By the time that Yukito managed to drag himself into the suite of offices rented out by the foundation, he had almost never been happier to see a place in his life. The suite was small and cramped, the walls were a disgusting beige color, nothing matched, and nothing worked, but to Yukito the out-dated décor and tight corners filled with loose stacks of paper flying every which-way were as inviting as home.

Maybe more inviting, given the circumstances.

Yuki and the rest of them had been working in this office since graduate school. The five had been hired on in the second year of their master's program as interns for an experimental project, and had never left. They had made their mark on this place, over the years. A number of partitions had been added, so that now the space was divided into five small personal offices, a front room used for research interviews that was marginally nicer than the rest, and a back room where the office equipment was housed and meetings took place.

Best of all, as soon as Yukito pushed into the front office, the enticing smell of cold pizza and the sound of loud, happy bickering alerted him that just such a meeting was currently under way. He allowed his body and features to relax – wincing as the muscles that had been supporting some of his worse bruises turned to mush – and picked his way through the jungle of paperwork to reach the back office.

The talking mostly stopped as Yukito gained the doorway, walked around to his traditional seat at the far side of the circular table and slowly folded into his chair. His torso continued the momentum built up by his legs, and a moment later he was sprawled across the nicked, uneven wood with one arm hanging limply by his side and the other arm flung out.

"Dude. You look terrible," Yasuo said after a moment. Yasuo was the only other man in the office, and the only _person_ in the office who preferred to sleep with women than men. He made up for his nearly-constant scapegoat status by always being the first to speak.

"Yasu-chan," his rival-recently-turned-wife, Aiko, said warningly. "But really, Yuki-chan, what _happened_?"

It was sweet little Yuri who pressed a slice of the cold, congealing pizza into Yukito's dramatically outflung hand, which he closed around gratefully. He sat up and took half the slice in one bite before answering.

"Touya found out about Soichiro," he said. There was a general hiss of sympathy. "_And_ he decided that my behavior constituted infidelity. I spent all morning in a marriage therapist's office." There were cries of outrage from across the table.

"_What_?" Yasuo burst, half-standing and raising both fists.

"But, but, that's not fair!" Yuri stammered, her eyes going wide at the thought.

"I never liked this 'Touya' character," Sakuko, their unofficial leader, muttered darkly. Yukito shot them all a _look_, and the noise level died down to a low, indignant buzz.

"It's his right to define infidelity however he wants," Yukito pointed out, reaching for the still-untouched extra large pizza box that was always put aside exclusively for him. "And it _was_ affecting our relationship. I'm just surprised that he took it so _badly_," Yukito mumbled around his food. "It's not like I had a romantic relationship at _all_ with Soichiro, and he was still really angry after I'd explained that I didn't feel for Soichiro that way. I guess I know now that I have to be a lot more careful. Touya has a really broad definition of cheating. And," Yukito said thoughtfully, actually bringing the hand that was holding his food all the way down to the table in a gesture of uncharacteristic absent-mindedness, "I _was_ spending a lot of money on him."

"But you're _independently wealthy_," Aiko wailed. "It's _your money!"_

"She's right, you know," Sakuko said quietly. No matter how softly she spoke, she could always be heard, because the others actually closed their mouths out of deference each time that she opened hers. "You were orphaned_ twice_. You deserve to use the money you've been willed however you want."

"It's not _my_ money, it's _our_ money," Yukito reminded them. Aiko sat bolt upright, eyes gleaming.

"O-_ho_," she said triumphantly. "Is that _so_? Is it a _joint _bank account?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Does he have any _legal right_ to the money?"

"Well, no, not as such, but-"

"Has he ever given you a ring?"

"You can see he hasn't, but-"

"There!" she said, banging her fist on the table, her eyes gleaming a strange mixture of victory and anger. "The bastard has _not_ made any public promise to you, ergo he has _no right_ to be accusing you of infidelity!"

"I _was_ lying to him," Yuki said meekly. "And please don't call the love of my life a bastard."

"Sorry," she said vaguely, ever gracious in victory.

"So… what happened to Soichiro?" Yasuo cut in quietly, in a rare moment of thoughtfulness. The question hung heavy over the table like fog, dampening and deadening all other noise.

"We-_ell_," Yukito said carefully. It never once crossed his mind to lie or abridge the truth like he had with the therapist. "I'd been trying to keep Touya from seeing my bruises, which I think pissed him off. He barged in on me while I was in the shower Friday morning and was… upset. I thought he'd try something stupid, so I decided to finish the damn job that day-"

"So soon after the last time?" Yuri murmured, placing a concerned hand on Yukito's arm.

"But Touya followed me and saw what was going on, so he did something to scare the kids off," Yukito continued doggedly. "I didn't see what he did. Probably something stupid. _Then_, the next damn _day_, he _infiltrated the gang's stake to rescue Soichiro_." It felt good to not try to hide the rage in his voice when he said the last bit.

There was stunned silence for a moment.

"Hero complex," Sakuko said disdainfully at almost the same time that Yasuo burst,

"Yukito, let me get this _straight_. You're _not_ angry that this Touya fellow went behind your back and _followed you_ without first asking you what was going on or giving you time to explain, but you _are_ angry that he rescued Soichiro?"

"He could've been killed!" Yukito blazed right back. "I can _deal_ with construc – I can _deal_ with gangs! I have the training, the education, the equipment, the connections, the _police back-up when it is necessary_." Yukito stopped to catch his breath, and continued at a more normal volume and tone. "He could have been killed. They _both_ could have been killed. And he's given far too much for me already. Call me selfish, but how could _I_ continue _my_ life when I already have to struggle to face my weak little parasitic face in the mirror every day?"

Yuki's four co-workers exchanged speaking glances. Yukito didn't speak much about his past or his personal life, and there were plenty of times when he simply couldn't offer an explanation for strange behavior or a mysterious absence, but spending every working day of the past eight years in each other's company, they had begun to piece some things together. It had been Yuri who had said, after their first two years together, "If you don't believe in magic, two weeks close acquaintance with Tsukishiro-kun will convert you."

This time again it was Yuri who spoke. "You're not a parasite," she said, in what for her passed as a firm voice. "And Touya loves you. I'm _sure_ that whatever he's given for you he would say is absolutely worth it." She had risen to her feet as she spoke, and was now cradling Yukito's head in her hands. There was uncharacteristic silence as her voice rang out, and Yukito found himself trying but failing to avoid the dark deepness in the young woman's eyes. "I'm sure he would say it _even now._ Things will get better. You'll see."

Yuri blinked, and the spell was broken. Yuki reached up and gave one of her hands a grateful squeeze, and nodded his agreement.

"Yeah," he said a little sadly. "I'm sure it will."

"Well," Sakuko said with a meaningful glance at her watch. "Yukito, I'm glad you're back. This is going to be a busy week for us."

…

"Yukito, can you come in here for a second, please?" Yukito blinked. The other anthropologists in their group swore by his sixth sense, but he had to say that sometimes Sakuko's was much more uncanny. It was six o'clock, an hour after normal closing time, and he and Sakuko were the only two in the offices. He had just stood up to begin preparing his briefcase to take home for the night – Sakuko never, ever, called one of them into her office when they were busy with something else.

"Yes?" he said politely, poking his head out of his office and peering through the evening gloom into the adjacent one. She looked at him for a long moment, fiddling her pen between two not-quite-feminine hands, her short, wavy hair turning into a dark, frizzled halo from the body heat trapped in her tiny office.

"Are you all right?" she finally asked, putting down the pen, a note of uncharacteristic tenderness in her voice. Yukito quirked her a little smile and pulled the tiny spindly chair that was the only other furnishings in her office out of its corner. Straddling it, he gave Sakuko his full attention.

"Not completely," he admitted. "But I will be."

Sakuko nodded. "How's Soichiro?" she asked after a moment. Yukito shrugged.

"He's in good hands. I'm not going to be allowed to see him anymore."

Yukito had spoken with the same evasive syntax and bland tone of voice that he always did when he couldn't explain what he meant. Sakuko's only reaction was to raise her eyebrows almost imperceptibly – but in her case, the blankness to her features wasn't something carefully studied in order to earn a patient's trust, it was simply the way that she was. She respected people's privacy, no questions asked.

"I'm afraid this isn't going to be a good month for you, Yuki," she said heavily. She was the only one of his group mates who ever called him by Touya's honorific-less pet name. She was the only one who had ever tried, but Yukito had found that he didn't mind. The name sounded natural spoken off of her lips. "The Foundation is thinking about axing the funding for the Yasuyuga Project." Yukito stifled a groan. "I need everyone working fifty hours a week to get as much done as possible."

"And then when they _do_ axe the funding, you need me to bargain for more time," Yukito finished flatly. Yukito could be extremely persuasive when he needed to be, but it was something that sat heavily on his conscience, and his conscience was about as heavy as he could bear right now.

Sakuko looked down and nodded.

"Oh, very well," Yukito conceded, and gave his friend a true smile. "If it's for the good of the partnership. _And_ because I know you've been pulling seventy hour weeks for the past three months to try to get the project finished."

Relief and gratitude flooded into the woman's face, pushing the last few ounces of uncertainty out of Yukito's.

"You're to start increasing your time next week, of course," Sakuko said firmly, a note of new life in her voice. "I want you to take it easy this week."

Yukito waved a hand in acknowledgment and thanks. "Mondays from now on I'll be working twelve to eight. Tuesdays I need to take an extended lunch, so I'll work til six. Thursdays I'll work _your_ schedule." It was a bit of a joke. The partnership always said that it was a nine to five job, unless you were Sakuko who simply worked until the work was done.

"Is that for the therapist?" she asked, once again displaying that uncanny ability to know things that she probably shouldn't.

"Yeah," Yukito sighed.

"It might help, a little," Sakuko said gently, seeing the hard look in his eye.

"Yeah," Yukito agreed, slightly more enthusiastically. He allowed himself a few moments of companionable silence before heaving himself to his feet.

"I should be going. You should too." Sakuko waved an ambiguous hand. Yuki already knew that it was hopeless. None of the other four had ever seen Sakuko leave the office, and only once had Yuri ever seen her arrive.

Yukito closed the main suite door with a click, but not before he had thrown every light in their corner of the building on, to keep her company.

**Drop me a line to let me know you read!**


	4. Sun, Moon, Stars, and Blame

Monday homecomings were usually a little bleak for Yukito, but today he was actually looking forward to coming home to an empty house. The apartment loomed out before him big and dark and comfortably when he pushed open the door, and he smiled as a click of the light switch brought the indistinct shapes and lumbering shadows into familiar, sharp relief.

The first order of business, as always, was dinner. Dinner, technically, was the responsibility of whoever got home first, but in practicality this meant that Yukito was almost always cooking. Except for Mondays, Touya was always home to join Yukito for dinner – but on Mondays, Touya's residency hours spanned the entire evening until nine o'clock, and Yukito often had trouble filling the blank, empty hours between the time that he came home and the time that Touya stepped through the door.

After the cold politeness and stiff formality that had characterized their Sunday together, however, Yukito was happy to have their home to himself for a while.

He had brought some work home with him, and found himself absent-mindedly perusing the documents as he ate, wielding his chopsticks with uncharacteristic care so as not to splatter food on the reports. Once the dishes were done and the leftovers had been carefully tucked away into the fridge Yukito relocated into the living room, curling himself into his favorite armchair and laying out the pages of essays that needed correction on the over-sized arms.

When Touya finally did get home, the relaxing effects of productivity and a large dinner had worked their magic. Yukito was pulled out of his work by the soft grinding of the key turning in the lock, and began clearing up his work with true cheerful anticipation, even in spite of the tense atmosphere that had hung thick between him and his love for the past four days.

Out of habit, Touya went to the kitchen as soon as he had pulled off his jacket and replaced his shoes for slippers. Monday evenings, that was usually where Yukito was to be found, reading a book or completing some chore, patiently waiting for Touya to come home.

"I'm in here," Yukito called. He was still trying to reorganize the pages of his report into some coherent order when Touya poked his head in the room. Yukito glanced at the clock as he tapped the report smartly on the coffee table and slipped it back into his briefcase.

"You're home later than usual," he remarked, doing a passably good job of hiding his wince of pain as he rose to his feet. "Was everything all right at work?"

Touya's face was tense and hooded with anxiety – he clearly had been worrying about this moment all day – but was beginning to clear in the face of the sheer domestic normalcy of the scene.

"No, everything went fine," he said softly, following Yukito into the kitchen, raising his voice a little over the clatter as Yukito began to heat his dinner. "I just stopped at the drug store on the way home to pick up a few things. What were you working on?"

Yukito was surprised by Touya's interest. Normally, he seemed to ignore his work all together – Yukito rather thought that Touya viewed it as a dull and eccentric hobby. Yukito put his uncharacteristic curiosity down to never having seen Yukito take work home before.

"Oh, it was just some reports for the Yasayu-" he stopped suddenly, mouth still open, hand still on the cabinet where they kept the plates, brow furrowing into a deep, thoughtful frown. Did Touya even know what the Yasayuga Project _was_? Yukito took a moment to carefully replay the past year's worth of memories, and nearly whistled in shock. Not once, in all that time, had he even thought to mention it.

He shouldn't have been surprised, really. When they were together, Touya and Yuki either talked about Touya's residency or Yukito's magical work for Sakura. Yukito had always fostered Touya's disinterest in his work, since they certainly didn't depend on his salary for their livelihood, and because so much of Yukito's work probably wouldn't qualify under Touya's definition of 'totally safe.'

Yukito's mind began to whirl as for the first time in six years the depth of this lack of communication dawned on him – and the way that he was currently feeling, he was immediately convinced that his reticence, which of course he viewed as solely his fault, had permanently impaired their relationship. In an instant the cheerful comfort had gone, and he was back to feeling pathetic, worthless, and hugely guilty.

It took him a moment to realize that Touya was on his feet, and another moment to recognize that Touya had mistaken his slack-jawed shock for a sudden summons from Sakura. He pulled himself together as best as he could, and reassured Touya that nothing was wrong, that his sister was _fine_. It didn't occur to him to reassure him that he was fine as well. Finally, once the microwave had beeped and the familiar motions of dishing the food out onto a plate had forced him back into normality, he resumed speaking. His voice still sounded slightly horrified, like it was coming from a long way off.

"The Yasayuga Project is the name that we've given our research report on elder abuse. So much of elder care in Japan is done within the family that there isn't a lot of infrastructure to determine if seniors are being mistreated, but our research is showing that it happens a lot more frequently than people would like to think. Families just aren't built the way that they used to be," Yukito explained, allowing himself to fall back on the warm, familiar speech patterns of explanation. "These days, it's not uncommon for every adult in a household to work, and for their children to spend nearly the full workday at school. There's no one around to take care of the grandparents, and they suffer from neglect.

"I was just going over some of the interviews that Yasuo – my coworker," Yukito rushed to fill in, seeing the blank look in Touya's eye. _Sun, moon and stars, _he swore silently when he saw that even his co-workers' names failed to ring a bell in Touya's memory. _What have we __**talked**__ about for the last six years?_ "Did last week with some nurses in the Alzheimer's unit of a local hospital – your hospital, actually."

"I've never seen you bring home work before," Touya mumbled between bites. Yukito felt his face go stony as he listened carefully for the note of accusation or suspicion that he was _sure_ had been hidden somewhere in the comment. Unable to find it, he answered guardedly.

"I'm going to be working a lot the next few weeks," Yukito picked his way gingerly through the words, pointedly _not_ mentioning that he had a day and a half's worth of work to make up for because of the time he had missed. "The Foundation wants to axe the funding on the project."

Touya blinked, and Yukito was surprised to see that Touya looked truly indignant. "What?" he asked, a frown playing with his brow and lips. "Why? It seems like a wonderful project!"

Somewhere deep and dark and still and cold, somewhere that not even Yueh was allowed to go, echoed oddly at the words. Yukito noticed it only vaguely, and failed to give it even a second thought.

"Politics," Yukito answered simply, pulling at his lower lip with his right hand. Usually by this time Yukito needed a second dinner, but he hadn't quite had his normal appetite over the past four days. He was having a hard time working out what to do with his hands while he watched someone else eat. "Literally. Rumor has it that the Foundation president is trying for a Diet seat next November, and he thinks that broadcasting a problem like elder abuse will only estrange voters who don't like to think that traditional family values are going out of style. Or something." Yukito sighed, and began fiddling with his glasses. "We've already been taken off all of our research that has to do with organized crime. That was a big blow, because the work that we were doing with the Kabuki-cho prostitutes could have been really beneficial. But organized crime is another 'politically charged topic,'" Yukito formed the words with distaste. He was sweating now, and his hands were fumbling and shaking as he played with his wire frames, because this was getting dangerously close to the topic of gangs, which was dangerously close to the topic of Soichiro – but luckily Touya didn't press him to say anymore. Instead he just shook his head.

"That's terrible," he said sympathetically, simple sincerity ringing in his voice like a bell. He even seemed to have forgotten that awful, tense nervousness he had been adopting around Yukito for the past few days.

"I know," Yukito mused, once again vaguely noticing a strange echoing vibration reaching the back of his mind from somewhere in the depths of his soul. "But that's life. Men with a lot of money usually aren't content to use it _all_ on charitable works."

"I had no idea that that was the kind of research that you were doing, either," Touya continued. Once again, Yukito listened bleakly for any kind of reproach in his lover's voice, and once again couldn't find any. "I bet it's fascinating," he continued, as he stood and began moving his dishes to the sink.

"Oh, no, I'll get the dishes," Yukito said hurriedly, happily clinging to the banks of familiarity at last. Squabbling over who did the dishes was a daily part of life in their household. "You need to go to bed, it's almost ten thirty. They really shouldn't schedule your Monday and Tuesday shifts only twelve hours apart," Yukito clucked, fussing around near the sink to see if Touya would give him an opening. To his total surprise, he did.

"All right," Touya said briskly, pushing the plates into Yukito's surprised hands. "I'll go get the bandages ready. I need to see to your injuries tonight. I should have done it yesterday. It was stupid of me not to," his voice was self-critical, but he didn't need to add that they had both been too busy being polite at each other to actually get much of anything done, "but I picked up some astringent at the drug store on the way home, so maybe it's all for the best. Meet me in the bedroom when you're done with that."

Yukito had meant to protest, to say that he would be fine ministrating to his wounds on his own and to remind him that he needed to be up in just a few hours, but Touya's brisk, efficient attitude had totally disarmed him. He washed the dishes meekly and set them in the dish drainer, before padding into the bedroom.

Touya had set up his side of the bed just like a doctor's work table, with all the first aid equipment that they owned neatly laid out across the bedspread.

"Lay down," Touya said in that tone of voice of his which wasn't _precisely_ an order, but that Yukito had never worked up the courage to test. "Take off your shirt, too, please."

Yukito was lying face down with his back exposed before he even realized that he had moved. He heard the soft rustling of the bedspread as Touya picked up and rearranged some of his medical supplies, and then ambled over to Yukito's side of the bed.

"Mph," he grunted as he looked thoughtfully down on Yukito's still form. "This would be a lot easier if the bed were higher."

There was a soft splatting sound as Touya squirted something into his hands.

"What are you doing?" Yukito asked quietly. The smell and feel of the bed that he'd banished himself from for the past half week was having a soothing, relaxing effect. He allowed his eyelids to flutter closed and just listened to the counterpoint made by both of their breathing.

"I'm going to put an astringent on your bruises," Touya murmured in that dark, soft, comforting voice of his.

"Which astringent?" Yukito's voice was distinctly sleepy now.

"It's marketed as an acacia product."

"I'd bet you 1000 yen that the active ingredient is alcohol."

He _felt_ Touya look at the label on the bottle. "Well, what do you know," he said, his voice heavy with amusement, as he brought his hands down on Yukito's back. "I've told you this before, you would have made a much better doctor than me."

Touya had to lean uncomfortably down and sideways to be able to get a good angle at Yukito's back, and Yuki's psyche twinged in sympathetic discomfort, reviving him a little.

"I was _built_ to be a good doctor," he said bitterly, shifting his weight to give his head more freedom of movement and to give Touya a better angle. "At least now I know that what I'm doing, I'm doing on my own."

Touya didn't say anything. He just continued to massage Yukito's back in large, competent strokes. After a moment Yukito felt Touya brace a knee against the side of the bed to steady himself as he bent over Yukito's still form. It seemed to help, but Touya was still struggling to swathe both sides of Yukito's back equally. Finally, Yuki heard Touya mutter something like, "Oh, to hell with it," and the bed shifted under a new weight. The pressure on his back trembled for a moment and evened out.

"Sorry," Touya murmured from somewhere directly above him, and Yukito realized that Touya was kneeling with one leg on either side of him on the bed. "I'll try not to sit on you."

The close proximity, strangely, was making him blush in a way that Touya hadn't made him blush in years. The soft, caressing motion of Touya's hands was causing his heart to beat too fast and his stomach to feel far too light.

Touya didn't realize that he was crying for nearly another five minutes. Yukito kept his face resolutely hidden from view, and by sheer brute force of will kept his breathing steady, deep and even. Eventually, though, he couldn't stop the sobs from breaking through, and he felt Touya's hands still as his shoulders began to heave and shudder under their force.

"Yukito?" Touya asked, and his full name sounded strange on Touya's voice. "What's wrong? Am I hurting you?"

"No," Yuki managed to gasp. Strangely, even he didn't know what had made him begin weeping, although now the knowledge that Touya thought he was crying for Soichiro was enough to keep him going. "Sorry," he whispered. "I apologize for my weakness." They both knew that he wasn't just talking about his tears, and Touya jerked his hands away as if Yuki's skin had burned him.

"Please," he mumbled, voice muffled from keeping his face hidden. "Don't stop? It… it feels good."

There was a moment of hesitation, but then Touya replaced his hands. He still massaged Yuki's skin in soft, careful circles, but the intimacy had gone, and Touya seemed as impersonal and removed as any doctor.

Immediately after Touya was done rubbing as much astringent into Yukito's tired skin as it would take, and had finished bathing and bandaging the cuts on his thigh and forearms, Yukito forced his leaden limbs to take his weight and he made to leave the room to Touya for the night. Touya stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Wait," his voice came out almost too deep to hear. "You need your sleep as much as I do. We should both sleep in here for the night." Yukito turned and peered sharply into Touya's eyes. The words had been resigned, but his voice had been hopeful – even inviting.

Yukito nodded his agreement and crawled into bed without as much as a word. He said a silent prayer just before he dropped to sleep that their relationship would mend enough that he'd no longer have to guess the meaning behind his lover's words.

…

Yukito left work the next day for Dr. Kobayashi's office in a state of real regret. Not only was he unenthusiastically anticipating the coming meeting, but he had had to leave in the middle of a promising row between Yasuo and Aiko. The last of their disagreements had left a hole in the back wall of the conference room from where Aiko had thrown the fax machine at her husband – unfortunately, the fax machine had been totally unharmed.

And _everyone_ remembered the fateful day, nearly a full year ago now, when a dramatic argument that had been happening privately in Yasuo's office had turned into a banging, thumping, clattering mess of noise. Of course it had been innocent little Yuri, too naïve to think of such things, who had rushed in to make sure that they were all right and found them _indisposed_ behind the desk. No matter how it ended, days where Yasuo and Aiko were fighting were interesting for everyone.

Yuki had his route timed almost perfectly – mostly in an effort to miss as little work as possible, partly in the vain hope that he would be held up by traffic – and didn't even have a chance to sit down in the awkward waiting room before his name was called and he was ushered into Dr. Kobayashi's office.

Once again he was motioned into a comfortable armchair across from the slightly more practical seat that the doctor sank into. There was a moment's awkward silence – _what am I supposed to __**say**__?_ Yukito wondered nervously, brain whirling into overdrive in his discomfort. _Hello? How are you? I'm feeling very sane today?_

Luckily, it was the doctor who broke the silence first. "I'm very pleased to see you again," she said, and she smiled like she meant it.

Yukito felt like a bucket of uncomfortably warm water had been dumped _up_ his body, starting at his abdomen and trickling insidiously up to his flaming ears. Her innocent words had brought back his mortifying lack of self-control the day before, and he felt the overwhelming urge to just sink into the floor in an embarrassed little puddle of goo.

Pulling himself back together, he said, "Thank you very much."

She gave him another, genuine, peaceful little smile. "Now, Tsukishiro-san, I do very much want to find out more about your family and your relationship with Kinomoto-san, but first I wanted to ask you: what did you think about relating your experiences of the past few weeks to me and to Kinomoto-san?"

Yukito blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?" he finally asked.

"How did it make you feel?" she clarified. "Was it harder to say in front of me or in front of him? What were your thoughts about it?"

"Um." Yukito said. The only emotions he had ever been any good at vocalizing were ones of love and happiness. His self-expression of pain or embarrassment was usually stilted, stumbling, and nearly unintelligible. "I guess… it was embarrassing?" He looked to Dr. Kobayashi to see if that was the right thing to say, but she maintained an expression of quizzical attentiveness.

"I mean, that's not the type of thing that _anyone_ wants their lover to hear," he continued. "And I guess I was scared that Touya would get angry when he heard it," Yukito hazarded. "Right?"

Dr. Kobayashi was looking politely puzzled. "You were scared that Touya would get angry," she prompted him to continue.

"Er, right," Yukito said. "I guess… I mean, when someone makes a fool out of you, you don't want it to be brought up over and over again. I guess I felt like I was rubbing his nose in it a little. I felt like I'd rather just forget the whole thing."

"I see. And if Touya cheated on you, would _you_ want to forget the whole thing?"

Yukito allowed his bright eyes to go dim for a moment as he focused his attention inward. "Well… I guess not," he finally said. "I'd want to know every single little detail, I guess. Up to and including bedroom positions. But… Touya isn't like that," Yukito said it slowly, as if he were puzzling over a problem.

"He's not?" Dr. Kobayashi asked kindly.

"Well… I guess I can't tell you what he'd _want_," Yukito still seemed to be looking inward. "I can only tell you what he'd _do_. He's not nosy, like me. He doesn't press people to say more or needle at them to continue, like I do." He stopped and turned his eyes back to the doctor, smiling a little sadly. "That's not to say that I don't give people their space, or I don't know when to quit, or I can't be patient. I can be very, very patient. But... eventually, I will get you to tell me what I want to know. Touya, he finds things out for himself. He disregards the details. He assumes that anything he doesn't know already and you don't tell him can't be important. So, no. I don't think he wants to know every little detail, like I would."

"What do you think makes him different?" she asked. The tone of voice she was using, carefully detached but with a sizzle of purpose underneath, reminded him of some of his old professors. In fact, it reminded him of his own voice every time he did an interview.

"We-_ell_," Yukito's mind began whirling on overdrive again as he wondered how much of the truth he dared tell to a woman so firmly rooted in reality. "Touya's kind of perpetually caught in big brother mode. His little sister is seven years younger than him, and after their mom died, he became just like another guardian to her. And, you know, a growing girl, she isn't always going to want to be truthful with him. So he learned other ways to watch out for her. Quiet ways to find out what was going on in her head and in her life. And that shaped the way he is."

Yukito was actually quite proud of his answer. He hadn't technically _lied_ about anything – he hadn't even bent the truth. He just hadn't mentioned Touya's long gone second sight, or Sakura's larger-than-normal arsenal of illusion-making.

Dr. Kobayashi nodded understandingly, and the next words out of her mouth halted Yukito's self congratulations.

"And what about you?" she asked. "What makes you always want to dig deeper?"

_Here it comes_, Yukito thought miserably, as explanations of Clow's treachery and death, his imaginary grandparents, and his long-unknown alternate form floated through his mind. He tried to make it look as if his panic were simply perfectly normal thoughtfulness. As if there was _anything_ about this situation that was normal.

"I… uh." Yuki found himself filling in a silent snide comment about what a good start that had been. "Well – I guess – Oh, my. Well, I guess it _could_ be because my grandparents… died. While they were traveling in Ireland." That didn't sound too bad, he thought, listening to the words.

"I lived with my grandparents almost all of my life, and as soon as I was old enough to be by myself they started spending most of their time traveling. It had always been their dream to see the world together, and I was very happy that they were still so much in love, and that they trusted me enough to give me the kind of freedom that most teenage boys only dream about." Yukito was hitting his stride now. Even this was a sort of truth, if a very twisty variety, and it wasn't _too_ hard to remember what he used to tell himself those sleepless nights of high school, when he used to lie awake worrying over why he didn't seem to miss his grandparents.

"They both died of lung cancer while they were abroad. I was told that they died at nearly the same time, holding hands and smiling. I shouldn't have been surprised, since they were both lifetime smokers, but I hadn't even known that they were sick. They hadn't mentioned a word to me their last time home. So… so I guess now I always assume that there's more to a story than what I can see. And I assume that the part that I _can't_ see is the important part."

Dr. Kobayashi was looking startled and sad, like she was truly feeling for the poor disillusioned boy in Yukito's tale, which made his conscience twinge. He had told her the legitimate version of his grandparent's deaths, the version that had gone in the obituaries and that he had told the school psychologist, but that didn't change the fact that it was just a figment that she was feeling sorry for.

"How often were your grandparents away?" she asked gently, as if she were giving him the option of refusing to say if he chose.

"None of their trips were shorter than a month, and they were never home for longer than a week, starting when I entered High School," Yukito lied boldly.

"Did you ever feel hurt when they left you alone for that long?" That was a question with only one answer. But Yukito's internal navigator was beginning to get used to picking out the coiling stacks of smoke and illusion that would be truth to this woman.

"I did, at first," he said carefully. "But I'm ashamed to say that after we moved to Tomoeda – the first week that we moved there, if not the first day - I began to forget about them."

"Why was that?" she asked expectantly.

"Because I met Kinomoto Touya." This part, Yukito didn't have to fake. He didn't need to force his eagle's eyes to get soft and honey-sweet at the name of his lover, because they did it on their own. His voice lit up, and his features softened, and he was disproportionately pleased that this part of the story would be the same in _any_ reality.

"It wasn't love at first sight, but you might be tempted to call it that if you hadn't experienced it. I stood up in front of the class my first day of school, feeling small and timid and backwards and effeminate and utterly _abandoned_, and I looked at this _sea_ of arrogant masks… and saw one real face. Just one. There was this one dark, awkwardly tall kid near the middle of the room who was just _gaping_ at me. Well, he was doing a really good job of hiding it, actually," Yukito's conscience urged him to put in. "But he was still looking at me like I was something magnificent. Like he had never seen anything quite like me.

"So when it turned out that he was the class academic representative, and he was going to be the one helping me catch up on my lessons… to me, it felt like fate. He invited me over for dinner that very first night, and when I went home at the end of the evening… my heart stayed. It stayed in that house, protected by the fo- sorry, _three_ people I love best in all the world. It stayed there until Touya had the courage to pick it up and keep it with him, always."

There was silence for a moment, as Dr. Kobayashi seemed to sift through this information.

"Then I take it I can trust your survey answer that said you had an extremely high interest in mending your relationship with Kinomoto-san."

With a twist of feeling that felt like a crash, Yukito remembered where he was, and who he was talking to, and why. His happy memories exploded, blown outward in a shattering, glittering arc of pure guilt. He was left breathing heavily, eyes thrown wide but not seeing anything, hands clenched tightly around the arms of his chair without feeling them. And he was small. And timid. And effeminate and backwards and all the rest, except this time, he was the one who had _done_ the abandoning.

"Yes," he croaked, his voice bone dry. "You can."

…

The formalities, for Touya's visit to the therapist, took much longer than they had for Yuki's visit. Since the appointment was at her house, doorbells had to be rung, pets had to be shooed, coats had to be taken, and tea had to be offered before they could get down to business. But once they had, Dr. Kobayashi began the appointment in almost exactly the same way as she had for Yukito.

"Thank you so much for joining me, Kinomoto-san," she said, to break the inevitable tense silence. "Later in the hour I'd like to ask you a little bit about your family and your childhood, but for now I'm going to start by asking how you felt when Tsukishiro-san was telling us about the events of the past few months."

This question was significantly easier for Touya to answer than it had been for Yukito.

"I felt _terrible_," his reply was immediate. "I hadn't even known the half of what was going on. I just can't believe that Yukito would _lie_ to me like that." Touya's voice was dark and heavy with intensity.

Dr. Kobayashi seemed honestly surprised by his answer. "Had you not spoken of it before?" She asked, allowing the shock to show.

"No," Touya said, resting his forehead in his hands. "Well, not really. Not in any detail, at least," his conscience made him add. "I knew that Yukito had been seeing him for over a year, and that their relationship had been romantic for about half of that. But I didn't know how frequently they had been seeing each other, or that he'd been spending so much money on him. I just… I just don't know what I'm supposed to think." Touya's voice trailed off bleakly.

"So you felt betrayed?" The doctor prompted him gently, after an appropriate-length moment of pause. Touya nodded slightly, as if agreeing too enthusiastically would make the pain more real.

"Yeah. Betrayed, deceived, taken in, whatever you want to call it. I trusted him. I thought our relationship was as close to perfect as you can get. He's the love of my life - I can never imagine loving anyone in the same way that I love him, even now. And he found someone that he thought was worth breaking my trust over, and he didn't even _tell_ me. He didn't tell me about Soichiro, he didn't tell me about the gang, he didn't tell me about the blood price. I had to find out by invading his privacy, and I can't even feel guilty about it, because if I hadn't, he would have died."

"You were surprised, then, when you barged in on him?" Dr. Kobayashi asked, very tenderly.

"I guess so," Touya assented quietly. Dr. Kobayashi raised her eyebrows.

"You guess so?" she repeated.

"I mean… yeah, I was surprised. It's totally uncharacteristic for him to lie. He judges himself on a more rigid set of standards than he does anyone else, so lying or cheating or anything like that is… surprising. But… when I found out, it… well, it made _sense_. It was like all the little things that had been out of place for the past year just slipped into focus. His agitation, his impatience, his constant, chronic worrying – it just made everything make sense."

"So you had noticed him acting differently," Dr. Kobayashi said, as if it were important.

"If you had asked me that two weeks ago, I probably would have said no. I probably would have said Yuki was just tired, or stressed about something, or preoccupied. Everything that I noticed that was wrong _could_ have had a perfectly normal explanation. But I was just fooling myself. Now I know that everything that seemed a little off was just because whenever he was with me he was wishing he could be with _him_."

"And why do you say that?" Touya was too preoccupied with his emotional agony to notice the edge on her voice as she asked the question, and treated it simply like all her other promptings.

"Ever since we were teenagers, I've felt like I couldn't really understand him," Touya muttered quietly, as if he were speaking from deep out of himself. "I mean, I could understand him better than most people could, because my mom died when I was a kid, but even that was nothing compared to what he'd been through. _He_ was neglected, abandoned, orphaned," Touya called out the list bleakly, without letting himself dwell too long on any word. It was even the truth, as long as she didn't ask who it was that had abandoned him. "And when it became too much for him to bear, all I could do was hold him. I couldn't tell him I understood, or that I knew how he felt. I couldn't even tell him that it would all be all right, because I didn't _know_. And I always knew that Yukito suffered because I couldn't really reassure him.

"But Soichiro… the little I know about him, I know that his childhood was… similar to Yukito's. So much so that it can't possibly be a coincidence. And once I found that out, it just made sense that Yukito had gone off and found someone that he could really relate to."

Dr. Kobayashi debated whether or not she should nudge her patient in the right direction by reminding him that his lover's preoccupation could have just as easily been the a sign of a guilty conscience as it could have been a sign of dissatisfaction, but the hooded, uncompromising look in Kinomoto-san's eyes eventually decided her to change the subject.

"So, tell me a little bit about your childhood, Kinomoto-san," she said after she felt she had allowed enough time to elapse. Touya looked at her sharply.

"You're not going to psychoanalyze me, are you?" his voice was bland.

"I see you've read Freud," was the doctor's dry reply. "No, I don't psychoanalyze. However, it is true that our experiences as children help to shape who we are as adults. It is also true that telling me about your childhood is the easiest way for me to learn the names of your family members."

Touya's face barely changed, but Dr. Kobayashi _felt_ him relax.

"I guess the most important thing for you to know about my childhood is that my mother died of leukemia when I was nine. My dad had enough on his plate, grieving for my mom and working to support a family, so I decided to do as much as I could to take care of my little sister on my own. Sakura," he added, and Dr. Kobayashi was interested to notice that his face changed just by saying the name.

"I became really over-protective of her. She had always been extremely precious to me, but she became… the only thing I had left. Something to be protected, and loved, and cherished, both to remind myself that my mom was still there, in her, and so that Sakura never suffered from having to grow up without a mom. I didn't want to be like a parent to her, just like an older brother. So I teased her, and I'd pick fights with her – but I also walked her to school every day, and made her dinner, and sometimes got her out of bed in the morning.

"And she didn't always tell me things. I didn't always tell her things, either. But we were always drawn together, like there was an invisible force between us. If something bad happened to her, I knew. And if something bad happened to me, she knew, so I made sure that nothing bad ever happened to me. She was the center of my life, until I met Yukito.

"Yukito was a transfer student my first year of high school. We became friends almost instantly. Practically as soon as he sat down in the classroom. Which for me, is totally wild. I hadn't had a good friend my own age since I was like, six. He was just totally open, totally honest, totally _accepting_. He told the solid, unadulterated truth like it was the only thing that he knew, and he always made it somehow seem better than any story. He could look at anything – a book, a math problem, a relationship – and just absorb it, and understand, and accept it. Like everything new that he learned was beautiful. When you talked to him, you felt like nothing was off limits, because everything that was true was beautiful. He's just – he was just – he _is _just the most amazing person I've ever met.

"So when he got sick, like Mom did, I just… I thought it would kill me. I thought that I must be cursed, or something, to have the most important person in my life sicken in front of my eyes - not once, but twice. They even behaved the same way, while they were dying, always smiling, always reassuring me that they were fine, that _everything was all right_, not wanting to trouble me, wanting to protect me and keep my world gold-tinged and rosy for as long as possible.

"I really – I really thought it must have been my fault that Yukito got sick. And Mom, too. That should never have to happen to anyone twice."

Touya had been speaking with his head in his hands, voice pitched at a deep rumble, his inflection falling lower and lower as his story sank him further into his memories.

But the next time he spoke, while he still didn't take his hands away from his face, it was in a lighter voice, and in a register that didn't jar the bones to listen.

"And I got lucky," Touya said. "It didn't happen to me twice. I wasn't a match for Mom, but I was for Yukito." Again technically true, as long as Dr. Kobayashi didn't notice that Touya never actually said that it was bone marrow that he had been a match for. "One little transplant, and he was fine. Safe. Strong. I could hold him in my arms and not be afraid that he would break or disappear. And I knew, after that, that he'd never let me be alone.

"I… I felt like I had been exonerated. Like the universe had forgiven me for something, had granted me this wonderful gift, but in return had left me with an overwhelming responsibility. And I did feel overwhelmed by it – I used to wake up shivering, wondering how I could possibly handle the pressure. I still do, sometimes. After that, I knew that Yukito's life – Yukito's _happiness_ was in my hands. Even more than before, I felt like I had a responsibility to guard him and to keep him safe – because I wouldn't be able to bring him back from the brink of death twice."

Dr. Kobayashi could tell that the interview was over. There was still some time left on the clock, and there were still many questions that she had left to ask him, but she knew from the watery lines in Touya's face and posture that to ask him to divulge any more to her tonight would just be cruel.

She knew, from long experience, that dredging up and then articulating slippery, half-repressed memories could be more exhausting than any amount of physical exertion. She allowed her patient to sit quietly for a long moment, and only spoke again when Touya seemed to have gotten the bone-weariness under control.

"Thank you very much for sharing that with me," she said. She didn't need to artificially magnify the sincerity in her voice. "I can imagine that that was extremely painful for you. But… I think you will benefit enormously from our sessions."

Touya nodded and gave her a small, tired smile.

"I think you're probably right."

…

Touya had been exhausted so many times in the past few days, had felt his back supplies of energy totally sapped, that he was almost starting to get used to it. It reminded him a little of the weeks just after he had given over his magic to Yukito, before he had gotten used to getting his vigor from food and sleep rather than magic, except in those days the sheer, effusive high of knowing that Yukito was _safe_ had been enough to carry him through. He heaved himself down the hall to the door of his apartment in what he was beginning to think of as his usual leaden, stumbling gate, and scrabbled with the key until the door came open under his hands.

"Welcome home," Yukito called from what had quickly become his usual perch in their living room, piles of papers strewn every which way across the chair and onto the floor. "How was your appointment?"

"It was good," Touya said, sinking down onto the couch with a grateful sigh. "It was exhausting. But I think that this will really help."

Yukito gave Touya a fond, sappy smile, the kind that seemed to start at his eyes and trickle down to his lips rather than the other way around. The two of them, in spite of the nightmarish weekend they had shared and the slow pain of picking amongst the tattered shards of their relationship, had finally begun to submit, gratefully, into the arms of long habit.

Touya stretched his arms over the back of the sofa and made an inviting, noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Yukito allowed his smile to turn into a quiet laugh and stretched as best he could while still reclining in the chair before letting himself relax. He pushed himself to his feet and carefully picked his way across the crowded floor over to Touya's side.

"Mm," he murmured comfortably as he nestled into the soft cushions, allowing his head to rest in the cavity between Touya's shoulder and collar bone. Taking a chance, Yukito placed his hand on Touya's knee and whispered,

"I love you. Always."

Touya didn't say anything, but he snaked his arm around until his was holding Yukito in a tight, protective embrace.

"Why don't we do something fun this weekend?" Yukito asked, heartened by his love's good mood. "We should try to get out of the house." He didn't add that he wasn't sure their relationship could bear the tension of another Sunday like their last one.

"What do you want to do?" Touya asked quietly, the rumble of his voice making Yukito's nose itch.

"We could go see a movie," Yuki offered. He pulled his glasses off his face and placed them on the coffee table. He had to send them the last few inches of the way by magic so as not to disturb the comfortable circle that Touya's arms were making around his waist and shoulders. "Make dinner together. Maybe go out for dessert somewhere."

Yukito felt Touya's body tense, so was prepared for it when his gravity suddenly skittered crazily and bent sideways. He blinked a few times, easily, waiting for his brain and inner ear to get their bearings and for his world to sort itself back out.

Yukito was lying on his back, Touya sitting astride him, an approving smile adding a fourth dimension to his features.

"I'm going to take that as a 'yes,'" Yukito said drily, but his happy blush belied the surliness in his voice. Their bed had been used for nothing but cold sleep since he had been invited back to it.

"Mhm," Touya hummed, leaning down so that his body was covering Yukito's. "Let's."


	5. Trouble With a Lion

The second time that they visited the therapist together, the aura between the two of them was noticeably warmer and lighter. They had spent a romantic weekend together, shyly flirting and relearning how to relax in each other's company.

Yukito, always the sharper one when it came to relationships and self-analysis, did his best to push the uncomfortable memories of college psychology classes and the dreaded phrase _honeymoon period_ out of his mind, and forced himself to enjoy the hours of respite.

Dr. Kobayashi greeted them both warmly, and seemed pleased that they were taking steps to reconstruct the tottering frame of their relationship. It calmed Yukito somewhat that she didn't seem worried or disapproving of their overly-romantic behavior.

Yukito was calmed further when the doctor made no mention of either Soichiro or those damnable surveys they had had to fill out at their first session. Instead, the order of the day seemed to be trust-building between all three of them. They role-played a number of different domestic scenes, Dr. Kobayashi alternating between observing and participating as a third character. The scenes were all sweet or silly, involving minor goofy misunderstandings that made Yukito laugh and Touya crack a smile. No mention was made of heartbreak or infidelity, and it seemed like all of the little stories had happy endings.

Next, Dr. Kobayashi handed them each a script with lines of dialogue alternating between a man and a woman. She apologized to them sheepishly that she had no same-sex materials, but assured them that the purpose of the exercise didn't hinge on the character's genders. Rather than assigning them each a role and reading through the scene, as Yukito had expected, she asked them both to go through the script line by line and fill in the motives and subtext behind the interaction.

The exercise made Yukito quiet and thoughtful. Only once in two pages did he and Touya agree on what either character was driving at, and several times their opinions were so sharply divergent that it seemed almost as if they were reading two different scripts.

With five minutes left to the hour, Dr. Kobayashi collected back her materials and surveyed the two of them with benevolent, but serious, eyes.

"Now tell me, Kinomoto-san, what did you think was the purpose of today's exercise?"

"To expand our lines of communication," he said immediately. "A lot of the scenes that we role-played, the way that the characters thought to resolve conflict is totally different from what my first instinct would be. It's a lot easier to see the different options when you don't have an emotional investment in the situation."

Dr. Kobayashi nodded thoughtfully, and turned to Yukito.

"And you, Tsukishiro-san?" she asked kindly. "What did you think the purpose was?"

No sooner had Yukito opened his mouth to reply that the light went out of his eyes and his jaw slumped slack. The total lack of expression in Yukito's dull eyes made Dr. Kobayashi gasp in horror. It was almost like his consciousness had stepped sideways out of his mind.

But a moment later there was a ripple in the air that the doctor would forever discount as her imagination, and Yukito seemed to jerk back into his body.

"Excuse me," he said fuzzily, as if his tongue, lips, and teeth were not quite working in synchronization, and ducked down to rummage in his briefcase.

When he resurfaced, his eyes and movements were dagger-sharp.

"I'm about to get a phone call," he explained crisply, and Dr. Kobayashi saw that a clamshell phone was cradled in fingers that suddenly seemed strong and cruelly defined, rather than petite and elegant. He unfolded himself from his chair and strode over to the window. The toe of his patent leather shoe tapped against the carpeted floor once, twice, three times. As he lifted his foot for the fourth time, Yukito flicked the phone open with a thumbnail, cutting off the shrill, mechanical beep before either Touya or Dr. Kobayashi had even registered the noise.

"Are you home?" he asked, by way of greeting, relief casting dark shadows on his voice. "Did you get -" Yukito cut himself off sharply, and involuntarily turned a nervous glance on the other two in the room. Half-way through he seemed to realize what he was doing, and quickly exchanged the expression for one of calm composure.

"I see. Damn." Yukito sighed and picked at his collar, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood. "How's he holding up?" The question was asjed anxiously, as if he wasn't sure he'd be allowed to know the answer.

"Well, I'm not surprised," he exclaimed next, frowning at the mysterious speaker at the end of the line. "This hasn't exactly been a walk in the park for him, either...Yes, don't worry, I was almost done here when you called."

"Do you think I'll have to? I don't want to make waves." At this, Yukito didn't try to stop the concerned, significant glance he bequeathed on Touya, examining the man carefully as if he held the answer to an important question. Touya, already made anxious by the precognition that had started the phone call, felt himself becoming suspicious and concerned as well.

"Oh, all right," Yukito sighed, and he looked truly unhappy as he said it. "Of course I'll comfort him. But I don't think anyone is going to be particularly happy about it."

Here, Touya _did_ tense up, an uncomfortably graphic image of who Yuki was talking to and about what forming unpleasantly in front of his eyes.

"Yeah. I'll be over in about forty minutes. Yes, I _know_ I could be there earlier, I just don't want to come that way. Because… because I'll bring you a cake from that new bakery on the way over, that's why." Yukito's voice had the ring of real inspiration in it as he made the bakery comment. He had looked truly nervous for a moment there.

"Banana of course. You know it's his favorite. Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh I _know_, darling," Yukito said sarcastically, but with a hint of a smile tugging at his eyes. "You just can't _wait_ to dig your claws into me."

There was what sounded like a howl of injured dignity from the other line, but Yukito had clicked his phone closed, ending the conversation as abruptly as he had started it.

"I'm going to be spending the night at your sister's house." It seemed to be the only explanation he was going to give the man. He carefully kept himself from meeting Touya's eyes as he said it, instead busying himself with collecting his briefcase from the floor and making sure that the clasps that held his cell phone in place were done tight.

Touya made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, just as carefully avoiding Yukito as he finished with his briefcase and grabbed his jacket. Without so much as a second glance at either of them, Yuki had whisked himself out of the room.

Dr. Kobayashi turned stunned eyes on Touya.

"What was that about?" she asked, her voice unnaturally high. Touya spared her a sympathetic glance.

"Unsettling, isn't it?" he said dispassionately, his expression hooded against the storm that was brewing. "He's going to see _him_ again. And he's not even trying to hide it from me."

Dr. Kobayashi slumped back in her chair, looking grey. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Of course I'm sure," Touya said coldly. "Didn't I tell you? That's where I put him after I rescued him from that gang. I left him with my sister, Sakura."

…

Yukito, like Touya, was greeted on the doorstep by his sibling slamming the door open. However, unlike Sakura, the first words out of Keroberus's mouth were, "All right, kiddo, out with it. Why did you come the long way?"

"Don't you _want_ any cake?" Yukito asked too-innocently, making his eyes go wide and dewy. Keroberus ruined the effect by snorting and butting Yukito in the stomach, forcing him to double over and sidle across the threshold, wheezing.

"Of course I want cake," he growled tartly. "I've spent the last week folded up in the brat's pocket pretending that I didn't exist. Needless to say he didn't feed me _once_." Keroberus snuffled at the white cake box with an injured, wilting air.

"Oh, dear," Yukito said quietly. He lifted the box absently out of Keroberus's reach. "Is he really _that_ upset? I thought you were making one of your impeccably timed awkward jokes when you asked me if I would comfort him."

"You did?" Kero asked quizzically, his eyes never leaving the cake box as Yukito put it in the relative safety of the kitchen before rejoining his brother in the entryway.

"Well, I hoped you were, at least," Yukito conceded. "Really, shouldn't Sakura be handling this?"

"Kiddo's not back yet," Keroberus said gruffly, carefully staring into space, shoulders stiff. Yukito took a leveling breath. He knew what was expected of him: Keroberus wanted comfort, and love, and attention. He wanted to be stroked and petted and told that Master would be home soon, eager to be spoiled and teased and slobbered all over. That was always why he was called in, after all. He was Yukito the Nurturer, Yukito the Care-Giver, Yukito the Comforter. He would smile, and cuddle, and offer reassurances that, since he believed them, others felt that they could believe them, too – even when he had his hands full dealing with his own problems, even when he felt more like torching the universe for fucking up his life than like murmuring soothing nothings into an agitated ear.

But he couldn't begrudge his family the gift of his comfort, Yukito thought wearily as he sank to the floor. After all, it was the way that he was made.

Making a mental note to pace himself, so that he'd have enough energy left to deal with Syaoran later, he reached over and grabbed Keroberus's furry face in his hands.

"Hey," he said warningly, allowing eyes of amber ice to meet molten gold. "You know it's not like that. Sakura would rather be here any day of the week than in England." He held his brother's gaze until the lion was compelled to look away, grumbling something under his breath that Yukito knew he wasn't meant to hear.

"Hm?" he asked, his voice an admonition, sinking his hands deeper into Keroberus's ruff.

"I said, 'You know I always get worried when she goes to England.' Like she'll decide that Spinel and Ruby are better guardians after all."

"She would never do such a thing, nor would she think such a thing," Yukito said sternly, all the while knowing that Yueh – that _he_ – worried over the same thing. He brought his face close so that he could touch noses with his brother. "And she would be _horrified_ if she knew that you were thinking such things. You know that she just went to England to deliver Soichiro over to Cl- over to Eriol, and that she'll be back tonight. You _know_ that."

"I know," Kero said forlornly, some of the gruffness leaving his voice as he observed his brother with burning, liquid eyes. "But I still worry."

Yukito rested his cheek against the fur of his brother's neck, allowing himself to draw what reciprocal comfort he could from the stolid, heavy, patient form, and the dusty, familiar smell. For just a moment he allowed himself to be scared, and insecure, and lonely – but then he heard the faintest of clatterings from the living room, and clamped his emotions back down.

"I'm sorry," Keroberus was saying, and he sounded like he meant it for a change. "I shouldn't be such a pain when I know you have problems of your own. What's been _happening_ between you and Touya, anyway? I could hear feedback from the tension all the way in Hong Kong."

"Later," Yukito said heavily as he pulled himself away and hobbled to his feet. Keroberus blazed his brother with an eloquent look. "I really will tell you about it later, I promise," Yukito's voice was sincere. "Just, I'm tired, and I want to deal with Syaoran while I still feel up to it."

"All right," Keroberus acknowledged, flopping to the ground in the entryway to stare mournfully at the door. But his tail was lashing dangerously, and Yukito knew that his brother would hold him to his word with a hot poker if he had to. "And don't think I've let you off the hook about the other thing, either," Kero said slyly, as Yukito was half-way to the living room. "I _know_ that there's a reason why you came all this way in _that_ form rather than just transforming and using the teleport spell that Sakura set up. I can smell trouble, you know."

Yukito decided that there was already too much on his mind to bother gracing that with a reply, and stepped into the well-known and well-loved living room.

The walls of this house had seen so many conversations, so much laughter, and so much real love and acceptance that Yukito couldn't help but feel warmth trickling down to his very bones as he placed himself carefully down on the sofa next to Syaoran. The poor boy was sitting hunched over nothing, staring moodily off into the space behind the back wall.

Yukito waited until he thought that he had given Syaoran enough time to get acclimated to his presence before speaking.

"Are you all right?" he asked. It wasn't the most brilliant thing to say, but he did make sure to soften his voice before he spoke. Syaoran had never had a father, in much the same way that Sakura had never had a mother, and Yukito and Fujitaka had taken it in turns over the past dozen-some years to play Syaoran's paternal shoulder to cling to.

"I'll be fine," Syaoran's answer was immediate, and his words belied his fragile appearance. They could have punched through steel. "Onee-chan crossed a line when she started turning people into monsters. It's my duty to bring her to justice."

Yukito allowed the intensity that the words had left in the air to die away, and then put a gentle hand on Syaoran's shoulder. His muscles were as tight and rigid as steel coils. "You know, it's not really your sister in that body anymore. The only thing left now is the drugs."

Syaoran tensed even harder, and Yukito immediately regretted his words, but then Syaoran slowly relaxed. "Yeah," he whispered, closing his eyes. "Yeah, I know my sister is dead. And even if she's not – even if she's still in there somewhere… I can never forgive anyone who tries to hurt Sakura." The malice in his voice made Yukito shiver.

Yukito held very still, and took a moment to think about this. He tried the scenario on himself – wondering, if Keroberus ever took it in his head to take a piece out of Touya, if he would have the same extreme reaction. He frowned, but a thought struck him, and he tried the scenario with Keroberus taking a piece out of _Sakura_, and that did the trick. He nodded, satisfied that Syaoran was as stable as he himself was. There was just something about Sakura that made you unable to forgive anyone who tried to hurt her.

"Hey, Bro! I need you!" a gruff call tumbled down the stairs, jerking Yukito out of his thoughts. He hadn't even heard Keroberus move from the front hall. Irritated, as usual, by his brother's impeccably bad timing, Yukito gave Syaoran's shoulder another gentle squeeze before heading up to answer his brother's summons.

He found Keroberus in what now passed for his bedroom. The room had once been the Kinomoto guest room, but it had moved into Yukito's possession in his last year of high school when he had taken up full-time residence in his Master's house. Now that he lived alone with Touya, and now that Keroberus preferred to spend his days in his true form, the room belonged to him. It still looked very much how it had when Yukito had lived there – some of his pictures and personal items still lined the desk and dresser, and Yukito knew that his old archery set was still under the bed somewhere – but now had a giant, downy dog's bed taking up nearly a quarter of the room and a lever-style doorknob that Kero could work with just a paw. Kero, when Yukito found him, was looking uncharacteristically grave, sitting like a giant golden sentinel on the human bed near the window. Framed against the light and elevated above the ground, wings folded grandly against his shoulders and haunches, he looked eternal and wise. Yukito stepped over to him and ruffled the fur on the top of his head just to ruin the effect.

"Stop it!" Kero whined, trying to move his head out of the danger zone without getting up.

"That's not going to work," Yukito teased, moving with him. "It's one of the advantages of having arms. Now, what did you want to talk about?"

"Well," Kero replied, batting Yuki's arm away and thumping his tail invitingly for him to join him on the bed. Yukito sat down warily, resting his back against the headboard and placing his feet just close enough to Kero's swishing tail to be able to do him some mischief in a hurry if he didn't like the direction the conversation was going. "First things first: what in _tarnation_ has been going on between you and The Lump?"

It was a nasty nickname for Touya that Kero had invented shortly after it had been deemed safe for him to come out of hiding and take up his place as part of the family. It had been bequeathed in honor of Touya's lethargy, those first few years he had had to adjust to living without his magic. Yukito shot Kero a dirty look, but decided not to pick a fight over it.

"I feel like all I've been _doing_ for the past few days is answering that question," he complained, fidgeting under the strength of his brother's golden glare.

"Well, that's your own fault for being so damn secretive about everything. Out with it!" Kero's voice was a command.

Yukito sighed. "Touya found out about Soichiro. And the blood price arrangement. And he really wasn't happy," he summarized.

"I should say not! How'd he find out?"

"He saw the bruises. He barged in on me while I was in the bathroom, and then he followed me later than day, knowing I'd panic and oust whatever secrets I was holding. It was a pretty slick trick, actually," Yukito admitted ruefully. He was never reticent with praise, even for someone who had bested him. "And once he found out what had been going on – that I'd been seeing Soichiro for all that time, right under his nose, and spending so much money on him – he decided that I'd been being unfaithful to him. He really hit a wall. He's been making me see a therapist and a marriage councilor – the whole nine yards. It's a mess."

Kero's tail was whipping side to side now, as it always did when he was agitated. "What do you mean _seeing him_? Or _spending money on him_? You bought him some decent clothes! You paid his tuition into a youth boarding home, made sure that he went to school, and you took him to the mall and a few festivals and you brought him to an amusement park a couple of times! That's hardly what I would call an _affair_!"

Yukito shrugged helplessly. "It's his call. I'm surprised that he took it so poorly, but it's his right to define infidelity however he feels is right – and I'd been lying to him _and_ it had been affecting our relationship. I deserve everything I'm getting socked with right now."

Kero narrowed his eyes, and when he next spoke his voice was highly suspicious. "Look, Bro, I agree that you did some pretty bad things. I agree that it might even be a sign that you and Touya, despite the sickeningly sweet appearances, have some problems that you need to work through. But you _don't_ deserve all this, and Touya usually isn't this unreasonable. Are you _sure_ that he hasn't just gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere, somehow?"

Yukito placed his glasses on the bedside table so that he could massage his eyes and temples. It was just too much, to imagine that there was something wrong with Touya on top of everything else that was happening in his life. "I agree that there might be something else going on with him right now," Yukito said after a long moment. "But in that instance, we're in the best situation that we can possibly be in because we're _already_ in counseling."

"Except that Touya no longer has any trust in you," Kero growled.

"I broke his trust!" Yukito snapped, the dangerous, bubbling anger that seemed to be so close to the surface these days finally flashing through his eyes and his voice. "What were the other things you wanted to talk to me about?" He asked flatly once he had mastered himself. The first part of their conversation was over.

"Why did you come all this way in your temporary form? You could have been here in about thirty seconds if you transformed. And don't give me any crap about wanting to buy Li a cake to cheer him up."

"Do we have to talk about this?" Yukito said irritably. "And I still hate it when you all call this my _temporary_ form. I spend more time like this than I do as him."

Keroberus quickly hid whatever emotion had been forming on his face by forcing it to go carefully blank, an easier feat for a giant cat than it was for a human. Even though they were siblings, Kero could make his expression impassive to Yukito's eyes when he wanted to.

"I thought you'd gotten over all that years ago," he said finally, voice carefully neutral. "You are one aspect – one face – of a _complete whole_. There is one of you. Not two of you."

"Maybe I don't want to be a complete whole with him," Yukito said petulantly, folding his arms and looking sulkily out the window. Keroberus wrinkled his nose.

"Wait a moment. You two are in a _fight_? You're fighting with _yourself_? I didn't even know that that was possible!"

"We've had disagreements before," Yukito said stiffly.

"Yeah, disagreements," Kero waved one wing airily as if in dismissal. "That's inevitable. People are always getting angry with themselves or regretting their actions or wishing that they had behaved differently in a certain situation. In your case, the friction is just more… itchy," Kero scratched absently at his flight feathers as he said it. If Yukito had been in a better mood, he would have laughed. "It's _not_ normal for people to start giving _themselves_ the silent treatment! Is there something else wrong?"

It was the real concern in Kero's voice, as well as the sheer, stubborn determination in his brother's eyes that prompted Yukito to be entirely truthful.

"We're not fighting," Yuki admitted, allowing himself only a very small voice and carefully keeping himself from meeting his brother's eyes. He heard Kero snort his disbelief. "We're really not. I just can't… hear him, anymore. Sense his presence. It's even worse than before I knew he was there. Even then I could feel _something_, him rustling around in his sleep, I guess. Now it's like he's gone entirely. I can't hand over control unless someone summons him."

Keroberus' eyes widened. "That's not normal," he said after a long, anxious pause. It was Yukito's turn to give his brother a derisive snort. "Can I summon him?" he asked slowly, brow furrowing as if he were listening to something far away. Yukito was actually quite gratified that Kero was bothering to ask him permission.

"I really wish you wouldn't," Yukito said earnestly. His voice came out higher than he had meant it to. "It's just that – well," he paused, feeling like he was admitting something shameful, and looked away. "It's not that I _mind_ people talking to him or anything, but… since – since he went away, the transformations back and forth," Yukito stopped and licked his lips. "Well, they… kind of hurt. A lot. And when I come back to, I feel dizzy and sick for hours. It's really unpleasant."

Yukito was startled when a wet, snuffling nose was poked in his ear. A moment later, Yukito found himself with a lap full of lion, his brother having placed both paws on his shoulders in order to make it easier to lick his face. Yukito felt his body shaking like a leaf from the force of his brother's mammoth purrs, and the rumbly feeling in his stomach combined with the sandpaper weight of his brother's tongue on his face whispered a reminder of childhood injuries, all licked away from inside a protective cloud of white and gold. For a moment, Yuki was surprised, for it wasn't the childhood of illusion and false memory that Clow had implanted in his mind that he was remembering, but his _real_ childhood, tearing with his brother across the wide acres of Clow's estate in England, tumbling through the dusty rooms of his house in Japan. For a moment, his eyes blurred, and he simply allowed himself to be comforted.

It was several heartbeats before he realized that there was a shape to the purrs that were rattling his bones.

"Kiddo, that's _terrible_," Kero growled, still licking at Yukito like he was a hurt kitten. "That's just not good at _all_. Why didn't you tell anybody?"

"Everyone has enough on their plate," Yukito muttered hoarsely, his sinuses beginning to ache from the pressure of pent-up tears and cat.

"In this family, our plates always have room for more," he clucked reproachfully. "Once we get this mess with Li's sister sorted out, we'll get you fixed up right away. Okay?"

Yukito nodded wetly, and didn't even complain when Keroberus blew a breath over him that was scented with a magic that he knew would send him into a deep, healing sleep. He just allowed his eyelids to flutter closed, and slumped down against his brother.

…

It was his Master's voice that woke him, wafting through the air like the echo of a pleasant dream. He murmured and tried to shift into a more comfortable position as Sakura's magic, suddenly so much closer than it had been for days, coursed through his veins, but Kero's dead weight kept him pinned to the bed.

"Kero," he mumbled, fighting the urge to spit against the taste of incense and fur that was clogging his mouth. "Get off. Sakura's here." Kero snored something incomprehensible and rolled over in his sleep, giving Yuki enough leeway to wriggle out from under him. Kero slept hard, so even that little motion was a good sign. He'd probably come around in a half hour or so. Yuki gave his brother an affectionate rub behind the ears as he forced his sluggish brain to make sense of his various arms and legs – aside from the dirty feeling in his mouth, he felt more cheerful than he had in weeks.

He glided ghost-like down the stairs, stopping at the first floor landing to see who was in the house. From where he was lurking, he could see Sakura and Li standing together in the living room. They were talking earnestly, hands clasped, gazing into each other's eyes like there was no other point of stillness in the universe. Yukito was pleased to see that, while Syaoran looked tired and a little grey, the lines of his back were strong and assured.

Yukito established that Fujitaka must also be home from work, judging by the happy clanging of pots and snatches of one-sided conversation that were wafting through the air from the kitchen. He felt a wraithlike finger of apprehension trail a path up his spine at the thought of facing Fujitaka now, with Touya so upset with him. He had always thought of the man as being as good as a father, and he dreaded the disgust and disappointment he was prepared to hear in his voice almost as much as he dreaded the inevitable reprimands from his Master.

On the other hand, Fujitaka might do no more than scold him, Yukito mused. He seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood, Yukito noted drily as the conversation melted into a badly-sung folk song. Yukito shook his head, not for the first time amazed at the man's ability to remain happily optimistic no matter what was going on around him. Part of it, he knew, was because Fujitaka had inherited the infuriatingly, unflappably whimsical aspects of Clow's personality, but part of it also was due to an iron core that Fujitaka had developed in this life, and this life alone. Faced with the horrifying reality of his young wife's death, he had decided to take every opportunity to enjoy the pleasures that the average day offered, and he stuck to that resolution with a platinum will.

Yukito shifted his attention back to his Master and wandered quietly up near the doorway between the two rooms. He was hesitant to break up such a tender scene, but he had to face her, and soon - they needed to all be on speaking terms when the time came to face the Li girl.

"Yukito!" Sakura cried softly, neatly solving Yukito's dilemma. She left Syaoran by the fireplace and raced over to fling her arms around his neck. "How have you been? You must be having such a terrible time!"

Yukito was so surprised by the warmth of her greeting that he found himself lost for words. "You're not mad at me?" he asked finally, a little lamely. Sakura gave him a beautiful look of wide-eyed, slack-jawed surprise.

"_Mad_? Why would I be mad? I've been on the wrong end of Touya's righteous indignation enough times to know that it's no fun at all. You did bring it on yourself, a little," she admitted, all soft sympathy, "But you'd already been having such an _appalling_ time with the constructs and Soichiro that I can hardly blame you. Dad! Dad, you're making enough dinner for Yukito as well, right?" Sakura yelled before Yukito could stifle her.

Fujitaka appeared in the doorway a moment later, wearing his traditional checked apron and smiling benevolently. Yukito was forced to rethink his earlier judgment about the man's unflappable positivity, however, when he saw the same lines of stress and anxiety that he knew wreathed his own face reflected back at him by the other man. Fujitaka's cheerfulness, it seemed, might just be happiness to be home at last.

"Yukito!" he said warmly, a perfect replica of Sakura's happy welcome a few seconds earlier. He placed a comfortable hand on his shoulder. "It's wonderful to see you! Have you gotten that little misunderstanding you've been having with Touya worked out yet?"

"Um… no," Yukito said carefully, fighting the urge to call Fujitaka "sir." His surrogate father and sister were doing a good job of making him feel off-kilter – he had expected anger or resentment, or disappointment at least, but instead both Kinomotos seemed intent on making him feel comfortable and welcome. Fujitaka was even nodding sympathetically.

"I'm afraid you might have to be rather _firm_ with him," he said, lowering his voice confidentially. "He does truly love you, of course, but once he gets the wrong idea it can be almost impossible to break it out of him."

Yuki found himself nodding dazedly as Fujitaka led him firmly into the kitchen, still with that fatherly hand on his shoulder.

"Now, sit down and tell me all about how your work is going," he instructed, returning to the half-chopped carrots that were lying forlornly on the cutting board. Fujitaka, as an archaeologist, shared a similar field of work with Yukito, and he was always deeply interested in the Foundation's projects. He often teased Yukito that as soon as he and Touya were ready to move home, he would set aside money in the archaeology department budget to fund the partnership's research himself. Tonight, at a loss for what else to do, Yukito talked himself hoarse as Fujitaka finished supper, only stopping to help him set the table and round up the rest of the family.

Much like Touya had during his time in Sakura's house, Yukito found himself feeling warmed and renewed by the open honesty and acceptance plain in everyone's faces. Here, there was no injured dignity, no broken trust, no quiet, bitter judgment – just family members enjoying themselves around a kitchen table. Eventually, the conversation turned inexorably towards Li Fanren and her constructs, but in this setting even the pain of planning for the inevitable confrontation seemed dulled.

"We have to be ready to go at any time," Syaoran finished explaining their preparations grimly, half-way through dessert. Since he was the one who was losing the most in the unavoidable battle, he had been put in charge of their team's strategy and defense.

"Let's just try to make sure that it's _not_ tomorrow at one," Yukito said heavily, thinking of his appointment with Dr. Kobayashi. After his little exhibition in her office earlier today, he didn't like to think what the consequences of not showing up for his appointment might be. The words seemed to hit the air oddly as he spoke them, and everyone around the table fought to stifle a groan. They all recognized a prophecy when they heard one, but in an innocuous statement like that it was usually impossible to decipher the meaning behind the foretelling.

Sakura was the first to shrug off the uneasiness that the prophecy had left in the air, and shot Yukito an understanding glance, as if she knew what was on his mind. She exchanged a speaking look with Li before asking hesitantly,

"Yukito, I know it's not my place to pry, but don't you think you'd better tell Touya what's going on now? He knows so much already, it might relieve him to know it all…"

Yukito shook his head, and Sakura trailed off. "I'll tell him once this is over," Yukito said firmly. "I need to keep all of my attention on this right now. Our relationship is so strained that even a sudden motion towards _fixing_ it could unbalance me, and I can't afford to be unbalanced right now. You think she'll strike in the next few days?" This was to Syaoran.

"Yes," his voice was carefully professional. Yukito found himself envying the boy's resolve. "We found evidence in Hong Kong that Onee-chan is amassing a battalion of constructs to wage war on Sakura. It looks from her records like her plans should be almost complete. Onee-chan was never especially patient. She'll strike as soon as they're finished."

"So she really is trying to bring Clow's magic back under the power of the Li family," Fujitaka said sadly from the head of the table. Syaoran nodded, his face impassive.

Yukito looked around the circle of grim, tired faces. As tempting as the idea was to finally come clean and hopefully earn his love's final forgiveness, he couldn't bring himself to do something that would jeopardize all of their carefully laid plans. "Touya and I can survive another few days of dishonesty by omission," he said flatly.

…

Yukito went to bed early, shooed upstairs after dinner by a fussy lion who was still acting like a disapproving mother hen. Sakura and Syaoran stayed up long into the night, however, talking.

"I just don't _get_ how their relationship managed to fall to shambles so quickly," Syaoran was saying distractedly, curled into a corner of the sofa, Sakura sitting on his lap. "They're so _much_ in love. How does all that come crashing down like a house of cards?"

Sakura shifted a little, and Syaoran accommodatingly wriggled into a more comfortable shape. "They're both just going through a hard time right now," she said when she was settled. She had made her voice soothing to please him, but they could both hear her frowning as she said it.

"'Hard time'?" Syaoran repeated, his voice disbelieving - but not contentiously so. "People normally don't suddenly start lying to and keeping things from the love of their lives just because they're going through a 'hard time.' And that's another thing," he realized aloud, strengthening his grip on Sakura as he said it. "Why is everyone being so _nice_ to Yukito about all this? Touya's the one that I feel bad for. He's the one who's been getting lied to."

"Not everyone thinks as highly of Touya as you do," Sakura reminded him kindly. Syaoran stiffened self-consciously at her words. Over the years, he had come to admire her brother very much – and he was extremely sensitive about it, especially considering Touya still treated him like he was on probation.

"And also," she continued, her voice holding more pain than she usually allowed herself show, "I think that we _would_ have all felt bad for Touya if he had handled himself better. Yukito's in a terrible state. The thing with the constructs – them being made off of his template – it really upset him. I don't blame him. I don't know what it was precisely that got to him – maybe he felt guilty or dirty that he was in some small way a part of such an abomination. Or maybe he just felt like it made him less a true person to have thirty-some twisted versions of himself running around. But whatever it is, it's still upsetting him," she explained, realizing a little belatedly that not everyone had the benefit of being able to see, in a limited way, into Yukito's head.

Sakura clasped Li's large hands between her own petite ones and brought the intertwined bud up to her heart. "I can feel it, tearing his soul to pieces. Shredding him alive. And he's so strong that he's trying to face it down. Alone. And what's more, he's trying to keep smiling."

"Why does he have to face it alone?" Li asked, stroking the back of Sakura's hand with his thumb. "Why can't he have help?" he whispered in her ear.

"Because he's too sad, right now, to remember that he's worth helping. I don't even think he can remember how to go about picking up the pieces. And Touya is being extremely unhelpful, taking one look at the situation and just _assuming_ that the only _possible_ explanation for Yukito's depression is that Yukito is unhappy with _him_ and is after a new lover.

"Honestly, sometimes my brother is so insecure I could just _kick_ him," Sakura said viciously, eyes flashing in much the same way they had when she was a fourth grader, threatening to squash her brother like a bug. "Yukito's really in danger right now, while Touya – who's much too _sensible _to really suffer from depression – is just allowing his insecurities to get carried away. So that's why I can't be really angry at Yukito," Sakura murmured, settling back down into the strong arms of her prince. "And I can't be really sympathetic to Touya.

"But!" she said, her voice far away, her eyes holding the same glazed expression that they took on both when she was prophesying and just before she fell asleep. "It's not my place to get involved in their relationship. And they'll work it out. _Everything_ will _absolutely_ be all right. I promise."


	6. Of Brotherhood and Fatherhood

Yukito felt light-headed and claustrophobic when he walked into the therapist's office the next afternoon. He had come straight from the Kinomoto's house – actually he had practically come straight from _breakfast_, because every time he woke up, Keroberus was there to breathe another sleeping spell over him – and was very nearly late for the appointment.

As disgustingly cramped and lethargic as all that sleep had made him feel, he found that he was incapable of being angry with Keroberus over it, for he knew, instinctively, that the sleep was drugged for healing. His bruises did feel a lot better, after all, and the pain that still lingered around his joints seemed somehow easier to bear.

However, not all of the effects of the spell were good. He had experienced motion sickness for the first time in his life on the train into the city, and even now, walking on the very solid floor of the therapist's office, he could feel the after-effects of magic sludging through his veins, making him feel dizzy and stupid.

"So, may I ask where you disappeared off to so mysteriously at the end of our last session?" Dr. Kobayashi began abruptly, by way of greeting, as Yukito was settling himself down in his chair. If Yukito had been his usual self, the edge to her voice would not have been lost on him.

"I was at my Ma – um," he caught himself just in time, and blinked owlishly up at her, trying to force his mind clear. "I was at my brother's house," he blurted instead, fixing on the first true thing that came to mind without considering the consequences.

Dr. Kobayashi sat straight up at this pronouncement. "Oh, really?" she asked. There was still a bite to her voice, but it was softened by surprise. "I thought you were at Kinomoto-san's sister's house." She winced as soon as she said it, because it was Touya, not Yukito, who had told her that. Fortunately for her, Yukito's mind was still too fogged to notice.

"Yeah," he conceded, the end of the word turning into a yawn. "My brother lives at Sakura's house."

"Really!" she exclaimed, and this time her voice held pure, unadulterated interest. "And did your brother live with your grandparents, too, before they passed away?"

In his defense, Yukito really was very tired, and Kero's heavy-handed magic had never mixed well with his system. This was why, mind fuzzy and full of after-images of Clow and Sakura and magic circles and angel wings, he couldn't stop himself from asking, in a politely puzzled voice, "What grandparents?"

He knew that he had made a gargantuan blunder as soon as he had said it – he didn't even need to look at the horrified, indignant look creeping over the therapist's face like a rash to know that he had just permanently destroyed any trust that there could have been between them. In his sudden panic, his mind finally pounded into action, running on over-drive to force his thoughts through the dense, soggy nothing that kept threatening to stifle his coherence.

He still had not come up with a way to save the situation when Dr. Kobayashi asked, voice icy with polite disappointment, "What are the chances that you will begin to tell me the truth, Tsukishiro-san?"

Yukito looked at her, eyes wide and innocent, and found that he couldn't resist the temptation. "About as good as the chances that you'll believe that my brother is a giant, winged lion," he said sweetly.

And just at that moment Yueh flared up inside his head, and every atom of magic that Yukito had in his body began screaming a painful warning that his mistress was in danger, so he was forced to leave the interview at that.

…

It was late that night by the time Yukito finally stumbled home, feeling like something the cat had dragged in. Syaoran's sister, to absolutely no one's surprise, had announced herself by issuing a challenge that could have easily incinerated the whole neighborhood. Luckily, using the teleport spell that Sakura had set up, Yueh had arrived just in time to give the Windy and the Watery the boost they needed to extinguish the flames before the entire block caught fire. After that, the four of them – Sakura, Keroberus, Yueh, and an extremely grim Syaoran – had kept up a dogged, dangerous defense, countering the blistering attacks that she threw at them, waiting for her to wear herself down.

By about midnight she had lost enough strength that Syaoran was able to go in for the coup de grace, pinning her to the ground of Penguin Park with one of her own spells parried back at her – but only Sakura had the power to strip a magician of their magic. This was a task she performed silently, with tears coursing down her cheeks, while Syaoran looked harshly on. As Keroberus had expected, Fanren seemed to be driven entirely by her dangerous, unnatural power. As soon as Sakura had sealed her magic, she had fallen to the ground, totally lifeless. She was not quite dead, as her pulse and light breathing ascertained, but she would never move or speak again.

Sakura didn't even offer Yueh the option of staying at her house for the night. As soon as Li had laid out his sister's spiritless body on the Kinomoto's couch, Sakura dismissed him, and Yueh hurtled for home, crushing himself back into his temporary form as soon as he landed outside the apartment building.

Yukito was so tired, and in so much pain from the transformations, that he was shaking by the time he got up the stairs. He didn't undress, or turn on any of the lights, or even get a snack before he let himself collapse onto the neatly arranged blankets covering his half of the bed.

The sudden shift of weight woke Touya, who even at the best of times was an exceptionally light sleeper.

"What happened?" he asked, fully alert in a matter of moments. Even with his judgment dangerously impaired by suspicion and jealousy, he could tell that Yukito and Yueh were nearly spent.

"We caught the person who was making the constructs," his lover replied tonelessly.

Touya stiffened. "Who was it?"

"Li Fanren."

Touya became very still, as he always did when he was thinking hard and fast.

"The brat's oldest sister?" He finally asked, disbelief etched in every syllable. Yukito grunted the affirmative. "But we met her a few years ago. We _liked_ her – and besides, she doesn't have nearly enough magic to make a construct!" Touya exclaimed. "The brat has the strongest magic in his whole family, and _he_ couldn't even make one."

Recognizing the note of command in his partner's voice, Yukito groaned and pushed himself upright, resigning himself to another sleepless hour.

"There are ways that you can… augment your magical capabilities," Yukito said carefully, after a long moment. "If you're willing to pay the price."

Touya considered this. "You sound like you're talking about making a deal with Yuuko. Come on, Yuki. Be straight with me."

Yukito massaged his temples with his knuckles. His hands and face were a sickly, powdery white from exhaustion, and shone paler still in the unforgiving moonlight that streamed through the slits in the blinds. Yukito wished fervently that he could still hear Yueh in the back of his mind – it was usually his magical half that provided the explanations in times like this, that bore the burden of weary, unwilling words. To make matters worse, in the past few days Yukito had even found himself unable to draw upon the silver wellspring that was Yueh's magic. It was a source of energy as familiar as his heartbeat, and he was adjusting badly to its absence.

"Sorry," Yukito finally managed, prodded both by the ice crystals that had formed in the long silence and by the digital clock-face on the dresser across the room that was now cheerfully reading 4:02. "Dragon salts. Is how she got more magic. It's a sort of a drug. It increases your magic by several hundred times, but it makes you lose your mind in – well, in strange and horrible ways. They say that the soul of the dragon possesses you and chokes out everything but a lust for power.

"So you were half right, when you mentioned Yuuko. She must have been involved somehow, because we don't have any dragons on this world anymore. The source must have been three or four worlds over – remind me to talk to Sakura about that." Yukito murmured thoughtfully, his voice and attention wandering sleepily away from the matter at hand. He caught the hard look that Touya was giving him, and struggled to bring it back to heel.

"Anyway. Li Fanren. She got involved with drugs while she was doing her tour of Europe after graduate school. Apparently in England she fell in with a couple of sorcerers who were drug addicts – did stuff like ice crystal, and rosy, and lunatic blind – and eventually she got her hands on some dragon salts and tried it.

"I think she actually held out against the madness for a pretty long time. A couple months maybe. But eventually she got it in her head that Sakura, in becoming Master of the Clow, had stolen the Li birthright and that Syaoran was a blood traitor for helping her do it."

Touya whistled his surprise from Yukito's side. "She really went off the deep end, then," he said quietly.

"Yeah, she did," he agreed grimly. "Kero and Syaoran flew to Hong Kong this week to confirm it. We were all hoping that she was still living in the Li complex, but she had been working out of some Tokyo hole the whole time, which made tracking her out of the question, and we had to wait for her to strike first. So that's how this whole mess started. She stole Clow's journal from his house in England – we knew it had to be one of the Lis who did that, no one else would know how to break the seals on his library – and began making the constructs. I guess she must have finished the thirty-fifth one yesterday. There's some sort of magical tie to the five sevens, but of course it didn't matter anyway because as soon as Sakura sealed her powers all her constructs turned to ash."

Yukito said it so blandly that Touya almost didn't believe what he had heard. As soon as he had convinced himself that his ears were working properly, seven different alarm bells began blazing in his mind. He decided to vocalize the largest and deepest first.

"So Soichiro's… dead, then?"

There was a long, tense silence.

"I wouldn't know," Yukito said finally, voice tight and clipped. "I would _like_ to think that Cl – Eriol would call me if anything that drastic had happened to the boy – if he hadn't managed to find a way to have him live."

"What does _Eriol_ have to do with it?" Touya yelped, too surprised to stop and think.

"Soichiro is with Eriol," Yukito explained, fighting hard to keep the impatience from his voice. "Sakura went to England on Sunday to drop him off – although, it was arranged so suddenly you might not have heard," Yukito said, as much to himself as to Touya. "I know that before we pulled the plug on Fanren he was going to try to find something else to tie the boy's life to – like how my life is tied to the Book of Clow, rather than to Sakura. Soichiro is the only stable construct she made," Yukito said bitterly. "It seems a shame that thirty-four children had to die from one woman's madness, but that's magic for you."

Touya opened his mouth, perhaps to comfort Yukito, but he closed it again almost at once. Finally succumbing to his exhaustion, Yukito had fallen asleep sitting up against the headboard, face turned down in a vicious scowl even in sleep. Touya made no move to arrange him into a more comfortable position, condemning him to a horrible back-ache when he finally awoke – but he did stay up for a long time, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

…

Things did seem to get better after that. True, Yukito had missed so much work that he was now pulling eleven and twelve hour days trying to get it all finished, and true, his relationship with their therapist continued to down spiral into absolute, mutual dislike. But he and Touya seemed to be getting more comfortable around each other, and Yukito fell back gratefully on the familiar domestic habits that had defined his life for the past decade. Evenings they were both home they would eat dinner together and talk, and then play a card game or read, enjoying each other's company – or, more often now, Touya would read while Yukito made frantic notes on another new report that he had had to bring home with him. Yukito noticed vaguely that the number of evenings that they shared together seemed to have dwindled sharply, but was too busy to press it. These days, he cherished his Monday and Thursday evenings alone at the office.

It wasn't _entirely_ his fault, Sakura would say later, that he failed to notice the warning signs in his lover's behavior. He was truly preoccupied with the frantic sprint that had become his work life, and whatever energy he had left over was dedicated to piecing together the tattered remains of his emotional stability. And as the weeks began counting towards almost a month, the inevitable interview with the foundation president began looming ominously on the horizon, adding a dimension of guilt and self-doubt to the already volatile mix.

Still, he should have noticed that there was something wrong with Touya. At first, like Yuki, Touya seemed to be getting steadily more cheerful – and more comfortable with pulling the pieces of their relationship back together. He was more likely to talk than he had been during even the months preceding the initial fall-out, and even more likely to listen. The small inconsistencies in his lover's behavior – the times when a look of pain flashed across Yukito's eyes after Touya said "I love you," the times when he was quiet and unresponsive even despite Touya's best efforts, the times when slight things were overly prone to irritate – he forced himself to turn a blind eye on, and made himself be accommodating and understanding of Yukito's rapid changes in mood.

Dr. Kobayashi would later tell him that he had been trying to deny the problems in his relationship rather than face them and work through them, and that such denial can't be maintained for long. After only three weeks, Touya had had enough of playing the caring, sympathetic lover to Yukito's mood swings – a turning point which directly coincided with another escalation of Yukito's responsibilities at work. Yukito, worn and touchy at the best of times, soon became exhausted and uncommunicative. After another week, Touya barely saw him: Yukito would leave for work while Touya was in the shower in the mornings, and he would return only to fall into bed, looking rumpled, without eating and often without saying anything.

Touya, in his turn, was also at fault for not noticing some key changes in his lover. While it was obvious that Yukito was shunning mealtimes with him, Touya failed to see that Yukito had lost an alarming amount of weight in a very short period of time, and instead of realizing that Yukito wasn't eating, assumed that he had found better company to spend his evenings with. While Touya had noticed that Yukito was nearly always moody and irritable, he failed to recognize that Yukito was more likely to lose his temper – an anomaly that involved him stalking out of the room and going to sulk by himself for an hour – after _he_ had said something rude to Touya, rather than after Touya had said something that hurt his feelings. Two weeks of this and Touya was once again convinced that Yukito was involved in some sordid affair, possibly with one of his co-workers, and the third time in a row he came home after midnight smelling of someone else's perfume, Touya lost his temper.

"Where the hell have you been?" he growled by way of greeting when the front door finally creaked open. He was sitting stiffly on the living room sofa, somehow managing to make his silhouette loom large and threatening.

Totally unsurprisingly, Touya had chosen the worst possible moment to pick a fight. The dreaded interview with the foundation president was happening the following day at noon, and Yukito's mood was at an all-time low – too bleak, even, to give Touya the fight that he was spoiling for.

"At work," he said shortly, slamming the door closed and dropping his briefcase on the floor. "And then I walked to the train station, got _on_ a train, and came home." He didn't make any move to come any farther into the room, instead standing in the doorway with his arms folded defensively over his chest.

"All right, then," Touya said, voice glittering dangerously in the dark. "What were you _doing_ at work?"

Yukito gave him his characteristic seven-second glare, and then said in a voice that was full of sharp angles, "_Working_."

"Oh, come on, Yuki," Touya snapped. He was on his feet with no recollection of how he had gotten there. "Do you really expect me to believe that? If you recall, the last time this happened, when you said there was nothing going on you were actually bartering your _life_ for the life of your auxiliary fuck!" Touya was shouting now, and had crossed the room so that he was standing an arm's length from Yukito. "Do you really think I'm that stupid, then, that I'll just continue trusting your word -"

Yukito's voice, low and mellow as it usually was, had hardened to the point where nothing, not even other noise, could break free of it.

"Cut the crap, Touya." He said it so quietly that the contrast with Touya's yelling left both of their ears feeling hollow. "When did you _ever_ trust my word?" He gave his words a moment to sink in. "I am exhausted," the words became an assault with the jagged emphasis Yukito threw into them. "I am going to go to bed – _not_ fight with you. I don't really care if you join me there or not."

With one last look of contempt at Touya, Yukito brushed past him, heading for their bedroom. He paused only when he heard the front door slam.

"'Auxiliary fuck'?" he shaped the words delicately in the ringing silence that Touya had left behind him. His voice was shaking with both fury and disbelief. "What does he think I was _doing_ with Soichiro?"

…

For the second time in as many months, Touya found himself standing in front of his sister's door in the dead of night, wondering how precisely he had managed to drag himself all that very long way. Once again, the door flew open of its own accord, but this time the welcoming committee was not quite as pleased to see him.

"Where's Sakura?" Touya growled, when Syaoran had thrown the door wide, revealing Keroberus standing behind him in the entryway.

"She's spending a few nights at Tomoyo's place," Syaoran said nervously. Over the past dozen-or-so years, Touya had learned to tolerate Syaoran's presence, but the current dark look he was giving the younger man was definitely cause for concern. "Tomoyo just got back from that year-long safari, remember?"

Touya grunted. He did, in fact remember – Tomoyo had decided last year that her most recent designs lacked 'power, passion, and natural perfection' and so had boarded a plane for Africa in the hopes that the animals of the Sahel would provide her with inspiration. Aside from being vaguely worried about her safety – "Nothing, not even a rabid, hungry lion, would _dare_ come near her when she's holding her camera," Yuki had reassured him – and noting that he would miss the only other voice of mundane _sanity_ in a family where magical lunacy seemed to be the norm, Touya had decided that the impulse was no worse than some of Tomoyo's other schemes. And besides, Sakura would probably look just as good in zebra-stripes and leopard-spots as she did in everything else.

"Then where's Dad?" Touya grumbled, hanging up his jacket and turning to glare at Kero, just for a change.

"Fujitaka's gone to check out his newest dig site," Syaoran said, still with that nervous, anticipatory attitude.

Feeling like he already knew the answer, but that gravity or some other universal force was dragging the question out of him, Touya asked sarcastically, "And why are you two still up?"

Syaoran and Keroberus exchanged significant looks, and Touya fought the urge to roll his eyes.

"Well…" Again it was Syaoran who had spoken. Kero seemed surprisingly reticent, this evening. "We were waiting for you."

Ah. And there it was. "We wanted to talk to you about Yukito," Touya chorused along with him. The panicky look Syaoran tried and failed to hide at being found out so easily made him feel smug.

"All right," Touya sighed, bowing to the inevitable. He kicked his shoes off and slid his feet into the old, worn house slippers that he had never bothered to replace, and padded softly into the kitchen. "Don't worry about it," Touya called behind him, sensing rather than seeing Syaoran's internal dilemma as to whether or not he should follow him into the other room. "I'm not running away. I'll join you two in the living room in a moment. I just need a drink." This last had been said mostly to himself.

He allowed himself one small act of rebellion, and that was to take as long as he possibly could to pour the brandy into one of the wide, crystal glasses that their father usually reserved for special occasions. But after pouring out the brandy, carefully replacing the crystal cap to the decanter, putting the brandy bottle noiselessly back into its place at the very back of the baking cabinet, and taking a few careful, measured sips, Touya knew that he couldn't delay much longer.

With an expulsion of breath that was almost a groan, Touya paced the steps into the living room and made a show of folding himself calmly into an arm chair. He would have been confident with his performance, too, if that damn cat, lounging unconcernedly on the sofa, resting his chin on Syaoran's knee, hadn't been staring at where his knuckles were turning white from gripping the glass of brandy too tightly.

"So, you wanted to talk to me about Yukito," Touya said coolly, placing his right ankle on top of his left knee. "I feel like I should start asking people to take a ticket. All right, shoot. Say what you want to say."

Syaoran tried to exchange another furtive look with Keroberus, and finding it impossible – the cat's head was facing away from him, his gaze steadfastly and unblinkingly trained on Touya – burst in a rush, "We-think-you've-got-the-wrong-idea-about-Yukito-cheating-on-you."

Touya stiffened in his seat as a roaring sheet of anger momentarily engulfed his senses, and Kero groaned aloud.

"Tactful, kid," he heard the cat mutter.

"Why does everyone keep _saying_ that?" Touya hissed after ten carefully numbered seconds and one very deep breath. "I _know_ he was cheating on me. He _told_ me he was having an affair with Soichiro."

"Oh?" It was Kero who had spoken. Only Kero and Yueh routinely had the courage to stand up to Touya when he was in this kind of temper. "He actually told you that he was having a sexual relationship with the kid?"

Touya, to his credit, gave the question some thought. "He told me he wasn't sleeping with him," he admitted finally. "But he was lying."

Kero rolled his eyes expressively. It was usually not a good idea to bait Touya when he was in this sort of mood, but Kero – being a giant, magical, winged _lion_ – was confident that he could win any confrontation between them. Besides, it might actually do Touya some good to have the fight he was so obviously hoping for.

"And how, pray tell, did you establish that?" the cat grumbled sarcastically.

"The leader of that gang knew that they were having sex," Touya finally managed, embarrassment and bitter anger fighting for the upper position in Touya's voice. He couldn't believe he was having this conversation with his sister's lover and his lover's brother.

"Oh, right, and _that's _a reliable source," Kero said nastily.

"He had been lying to me about seeing Soichiro and about letting that gang rip his body to pieces -"

"Yes, he keeps something from you _once_ and everything he says is invalid forever," Kero said loudly, speaking over Touya. Kero was starting to lose his temper now, too – his tail was lashing furiously and his eyes were beginning to glow.

"_He couldn't tell me if he loved me or that brat more -"_

"And who do you love more, Yukito or Sakura?"

It was Syaoran who had spoken, stopping the argument cold and silent with his words. Touya slowly turned his attention from the lion to the man.

"That isn't a fair comparison," he said after a long pause and several false starts.

"You're right," Li conceded calmly, looking Touya directly in the eye. "It isn't fair to ask you to compare Sakura and Yukito. But it _is _analogous to what you asked Yukito to do."

Touya actually sat back in his chair, digesting the statement, and took a sip of brandy to give himself more time to think.

"He wouldn't have kept it from me if the feelings he had for him were brotherly," Touya said finally, but his voice wasn't entirely sure.

"True," Syaoran said. "But he might not have told you about him if the emotions he was feeling were entirely new." Kero was watching Syaoran, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, clearly out of his depth.

"Like what?" Touya asked dismissively – but there was a glimmer of something more in his voice. Touya was suspicious and protective by nature, but it went against every instinct in his body to be this jealous of the one he loved for such a prolonged period of time.

"Fatherly emotions?" Syaoran asked. His voice made it clear that this was only a suggestion, and he threw a questioning glance at Kero as he said it.

"That… could be it," Kero answered thoughtfully, brow furrowed. "I'm the only magical lion in this world, so I have no paternal instinct besides the duty I feel to my master… but Yukito now," Kero considered for a moment. "Yueh's soul is patterned out of what would have been a human's, if he had been born normally. I wouldn't have thought it was possible for him to want to be a father, since he, too, was made to be unique… but then, he also wasn't made to fall in love, and he did that…"

Touya saw it before either of them did. "That's just it, then, isn't it," he said hollowly, massaging his temples with his hand. "Soichiro was the same sort of construct as Yukito. They were made off of the same template – they're the same _species_, if you want to be insensitive about it. But couldn't it just as easily have been longing, being faced with an equal after all of this time?" Touya asked hopelessly.

As if this were a cue, Kero stood up on the sofa, shifting his weight easily as if he were just trying to push the cushions into a more comfortable shape. He stretched every muscle of his long, golden body – except for the wings, which he kept hidden to avoid giving Syaoran a face full of feathers to chew on – and stepped regally off of the couch, coming to sit quietly at Touya's feet.

"That's what _I_ wanted to talk to you about, little brother," Kero rumbled majestically, for once looking like the ancient, powerful sentinel that he was. "You need to start trusting Yukito. You'll never heal, separately _or_ together, if you don't."

"You mean I need to start taking his word for things?" Touya asked dully. He was too tired to argue anymore, and he knew instinctively that Kero wasn't capable of lying when he was behaving like this.

"That might be a good start," a strange, scratchy sound was coming from Kero's throat, and it took Touya a moment to identify it as a chuckle. "But I meant that you need to start trusting him enough to let him face his problems when _he's _ready to face them. When did you first start getting suspicious of my brother? Tell me honestly."

Like he did when he answered questions for his father, Touya forced himself to consider deeper than the first answer that came to mind.

"About a year ago," he finally answered, very quietly. Kero's eyes were uncomfortably bright, burning into his, but he was afraid that if he closed his own eyes against the light, the golden haze would just blaze all the brighter in his mind.

"And why did it start then?" Kero asked, in the same voice he might have used when asking a student to recite their lessons.

"Because that's when he started getting unhappy." Touya's voice bottomed out half-way through, but he knew that Kero had heard him, anyway. He hadn't even needed to think hard for the answer. Once he had asked himself the right question, it was there, waiting for him.

"Exactly." Kero's voice became less of a rumble, and it was tinged with satisfaction. "You need to learn to trust him enough to allow him to be unhappy _in spite_ _of_ the happiness that you bring him. And you need to trust yourself enough to know that, even when he's unhappy, he doesn't love you any less.

"And unfortunately, I think you're going to need to learn it sooner rather than later," Kero said sadly. Touya and Syaoran both had been slightly entranced by the speech, but the last comment had been said as a person, not an ancient magical guardian, and jarred them both back to their senses.

"Why's that?" Touya asked quickly, alarm bells once more beginning to clamor at the back of his mind.

"Because there's something wrong with Yukito," Syaoran said before he could stop himself. He shot Kero an apologetic glance that he had once again said something that he had not been meant to. Kero sniffed disdainfully, but didn't stop Syaoran from continuing to explain in his worried, stuttering way. "I think – I think that the two of us would think of it as depression, or low self-esteem, but in a two-part construct like Yukito, feelings like that – of self-rejection, or self-loathing – well, I think they can be dangerous."

"When's the last time you saw Yueh?" Kero asked bluntly. Touya thought for a moment.

"About four months ago," he said finally. "That's a little unusual," he admitted. "But Yueh sees time so differently than I do, I just figured he was taking an extremely long nap or something." His words had been apologetic. Touya was beginning to get the sense that he ought to be apologizing to _somebody_.

"That's true," Kero conceded, to Touya's surprise. "Not seeing Yueh for an extended amount of time isn't always an indication that there's something wrong. I suppose Yukito didn't tell you that he can't hear Yueh, anymore, inside his head?"

Touya looked stunned.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Kero said grimly. "And his transformations are painful for him now. They leave him feeling sick and shredded."

"Sakura said – it really shouldn't be us who's telling you this, it really _should_ be Sakura who tells Yukito who tells you, but everyone has made such a royal mess of _everything_ that we may as well tell you now," Syaoran said a little defensively to the room at large. "But Sakura said that she was afraid that Yukito's soul was fragmenting because of all the depression and emotional trauma. That the two parts – Yueh and Yukito in this case – were rejecting each other. That his soul was beginning to unravel."

Touya closed his eyes against the two worried faces and gave his panic a moment to over-take him. Then, shoving it all away with one quick jerk, he opened his eyes and said,

"What do we do?"

Kero – rather bizarrely, in Touya's opinion – smiled. "We give him time to heal. We reduce the amount of stress in his life. We take the time to remind him that he's loved, and cared for, and has people to come to, and we put up with him while he makes an ass of himself remembering how to be a fully-functioning adult. I know it sounds bad, but it really isn't any different than anyone else's depression – it just has slightly more _profound_ side-effects. But even then, depression can kill normal people, too."

Touya nodded and stood, as if he had come to a decision.

"What are you going to do?" Kero asked curiously, watching his progress with big, luminescent eyes.

"I," Touya said firmly, "am going to bed. One of us has to be the healthy one, and I've been doing a magnificent job of running myself into the ground recently. Good night."

Kero waited until he heard Touya's bedroom door closed before he began chuckling in deep, throaty purrs.

"What's so funny?" Syaoran asked, feeling a little light-headed. He'd never liked confrontations much.

"Him. I would have reminded _him_ to take care of himself, too, since the past few months haven't been easy on any of us, but he would have bitten me. Hero complex," Kero said, voice light and amused. His tail curled lazily around his paws. "My brother made a good choice with him," he finally said, voice serious and critical. "I was beginning to have my doubts for a while there, but they're good for each other."


	7. Final Breakdown

**A/N: This is the final chapter, everyone. Thanks so much to all of my readers – and I hope you enjoy!**

It took Yukito a long time to fall asleep that night, and when he woke the next morning, it was to a dull, hollow feeling in the back of his chest. He had always hated waking up alone, and the sight of the cold, smooth covers across Touya's side of the bed caused tremors to run up and down the length of the yawning emptiness that had used to be his heart.

And trust Touya to choose the worst possible day to walk out on me, Yukito thought miserably, covering his eyes with one hand as he tried to work up the energy to get out of bed. Today was the day that he was meeting with Suzuki-san, and he'd have to talk and laugh and be personable and pretty in order to ensure that he secured the funds that the partnership so desperately needed.

Suzuki-san was an upstanding businessman, the executor of a substantial trust fund that gave money to various charities, and – as far as Yuki could tell – a decent human being. But he must have had a sliver of moon magic in him, for every time he saw Yukito, his eyes became hot and wandering and his tongue just a little too glib. He had never done anything truly inappropriate, of course – he'd never made a pass at Yukito, for example, and had never said anything that could be construed as harassment – but he had made it clear that he would deal with no one from the partnership but Yuki, and that nothing put him in a generous mood like having Yukito loosen his tie and bat his eye lashes at him. All of their interviews left Yukito with a bad taste in his mouth, and if he didn't know that it was the only way to guarantee that the partnership got the funding they needed, he would have had Sakuko set the man straight years ago.

Normally, Yuki rationalized the twinge in his conscience away with a stiff-shouldered shrug and the logic that he wasn't _actually_ doing anything wrong – just letting a man that wasn't Touya admire him in a way that only Touya should – but knowing that Touya already apparently thought he was a slut, he seriously considered calling Sakuko and telling her that he couldn't come in today.

But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he found himself utterly rejecting it. The partnership _needed_ these funds, and his friends and coworkers were counting on him.

And with that depressingly bracing thought, Yukito swung himself out of bed. He did at least swear to himself that he wouldn't give Suzuki-san any of his normal encouragement – which had always been limited to a well-placed vapid smile or two – but rather, would be the picture of chilly, businesslike civility. Likewise, he chose his outfit with special care, ensuring that nothing about his appearance was anything but conservative. The baggy sweater that he slipped over his shirt and tie had been an impromptu gift from Touya some years ago. He had bought the deep maroon jersey on a whim, and had presented it to Yukito shyly, saying that he didn't wear enough bright colors. In better times, days that Yukito wore this shirt, Touya was practically guaranteed to jump him. He wore it now for the much-needed self-esteem rush it afforded, and wondered if Touya would smile to see it if – when – if – Yukito cut the train of thought sharply.

Yuki did his best to dawdle over breakfast – which was stupid, he told himself sharply, since it would only mean he'd have less time to get real work done in the office before noon rolled around. Finally, when he could think of no more ways to spin out his time at home, he headed for the train, feeling exceptionally grim.

His co-workers, when he finally dragged himself through the main office door, were extremely sympathetic – they seemed to have been waiting in ambush in the front room to offer him words of encouragement. They liked Suzuki-san almost less than Yukito did – the man had, for the past five years, kept the partnership underfunded, understaffed, and overworked, demanding outrageous productivity quotas and deadlines, and threatening them all with the prospect of yet more slashed funding. Yasuo put a friendly hand on Yukito's shoulder as he walked through the main room towards his office, silently reassuring him that everything would be all right. Aiko and Yuri both dropped in on him as the morning wore on, trying to distract him with funny stories or bringing him food and standing fussily over him to make sure that he ate it. Only Sakuko remained aloof and silent, never stirring from behind her office door. This didn't trouble Yuki – he knew that she, who lived and breathed by the partnership's work – was the only one of his coworkers more nervous about the coming meeting than he was.

Suzuki-san was unpleasantly early, but Yukito, jumpy and with his senses on overdrive through nerves, felt the stuffy, plodding aura through three sets of walls, and so was standing to attention before he had even come through the main door. Shuffling through the big front room with princely disdain, Suzuki-san barely acknowledged the greetings of his other employees before gaining Yuki's small office. Without asking, he snapped the door shut, which elicited a raised eyebrow from Yukito. He had never cared before whether the other members of the partnership overheard their conversations.

Yukito took his seat again only after the other man had settled into the opposite chair. He paused, waiting politely for his boss to begin the conversation while carefully keeping his deep dislike from showing on his face as he watched the other man. The foundation president was a short, neckless man, more muscular than stout, with a shiny, shaved head and deep-set, beetle-dark eyes. He was sitting in Yukito's office with a regal, proprietary air that was only exacerbated by Yukito's moon magic. This was a man who was so used to affluence that he carried ownership and control in his very posture. While the foundation did technically own the office and everything in it, Yukito found it profoundly annoying that a man who set foot in it only three times a year could saunter through with more of a sense of possession than the people who worked here every day.

"What's the smell?" Suzuki-san said by way of greeting. If anyone else had said it, Yukito would have laughed, but the comic memory was over-powered by his dislike of the man in front of him.

"Just a spill we had earlier in the week," Yukito managed with an entirely straight face. In fact, what had happened was that Yasuo had accidentally insulted his mother-in-law within his wife's hearing, and the bottle of perfume that he had presented to Aiko as a peace offering had ended up shattered against the back wall. The smell was strong and clinging, but not actually unpleasant, so Yukito had forgotten all about it after he had finished vacuuming up the broken glass.

Suzuki-san grunted. "And how have you been, then? You look pale." He made the comment as someone else might remark on a painting or a horse. The entire time he spoke he watched Yukito with the same proprietary gaze that he used to regard the offices and all his other possessions.

"I'm fine," Yukito assured him, allowing a tiny chill to creep into his voice, keeping his smile polite and disinterested.

"Take better care of yourself," said Suzuki-san bluntly. "You know I like you to look your best."

"You're too kind," Yukito drawled, but only his eyes gave away his rapidly chilling humor.

"That's what they tell me," the man said glibly, giving Yukito a flirtatious, side-long glance at the same time. Yukito was obviously expected to laugh – and on another day, he might have offered up a feeble chuckle – but today he just kept his polite, disinterested mask firmly painted on his face.

Until, that is, Yukito experienced the familiar, peculiar sensation that was his consciousness slipping sideways out of his mind to see into the immediate future. Yukito flushed – but in embarrassment, anger, or pleasure, even he was not sure – and turned his attention curtly back to his boss.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, and to Suzuki-san's immense surprise flicked his eyes to the doorway and called, "Come on in, baby."

Yukito winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and couldn't even work up the presence of mind to try and hide it. He never even called Touya 'baby' when they were alone together – the pet name had flown out of his mouth, totally unbidden, from the strange mixture of relief, irritation and surprise Yukito was feeling to find Touya standing outside his door.

This was the first time that Touya had ever come to see him at work, Yukito realized vaguely, and wondered if this was a bad sign.

But now the door had swung tentatively open and Touya was leaning against the doorframe, nearly filling it, a strange but not unpleasant expression lighting up his eyes.

"Hey, sorry to bother you at – oh!" Touya cut off, seeming to notice Suzuki-san for the first time. "I didn't realize you were in a meeting."

There was a bad moment then, when Suzuki-san tried to glare Touya down and out of the room, but Touya matched his glare with a cool look of his own. He had lived with and around magic for long enough to recognize the attractive effects of moon power coming into close contact with Yukito, and a magically augmented bad temper was one of the last things likely to intimidate Kinomoto Touya.

"Can I talk to you?" Touya said flatly to Yukito, without breaking Suzuki-san's eye contact.

"Of course," Yukito replied hastily, nearly knocking his chair over as he scrambled to his feet. Silently, he motioned Touya out of the room, and waited until he was safely out of earshot to make his excuses. "I'm sorry, Suzuki-san," he said, doing his best to sound truly regretful that their meeting had been broken up. "But I'm afraid this might take me quite some time. Would you like to speak to Sakuko today, instead?"

"No," Suzuki-san said curtly. "I'll wait. Take as long as you need."

He really would make a very good politician, Yukito thought with something like a chill, noting how carefully bland the man's face and voice had become. It was nearly impossible to guess what he was thinking, behind those overly-brilliant eyes.

"Thank you for your generosity," Yukito murmured, averting his eyes and bowing. He had to measure his steps carefully to keep himself from jogging to the door, and still closed it just a little too quickly behind him, heaving a sigh of relief as he did.

Touya was standing at the center of the cramped main room, arms crossed, eyebrow raised. He was positioned expectantly in front of the over-stuffed couch that they kept for in-house interviews, as if waiting to see if Yukito would wave him into a seat.

He didn't. Instead Yukito stood facing him squarely, matching his quasi-confrontational posture shoulder to shoulder. After a moment, he cleared his throat delicately, which Touya correctly interpreted as an invitation to begin speaking.

"Who was that?" Touya asked steadily, but his eyes held an extra dimension of intensity – a sure sign that he was upset and trying not to show it.

"The foundation president," Yukito said stiffly. Touya's eyebrows rose a little higher in dismay.

"Does he always look at you like that?" This time, Touya did a worse job of hiding how troubled he was.

Yukito wasn't sure he trusted himself to speak, so limited himself to a brief nod.

"Have you ever told him to cut it out?"

This time Yukito tersely shook his head.

"_Why haven't you?_" Touya's anger was different this time than it had been before – it was indignant and worried, rather than suspicious, and horrified that his lover would allow himself to be used and bullied for such a protracted length of time.

Unfortunately, Yukito was sitting on a stewing volcano of emotion that had long since passed its breaking point, and did not have the presence of mind to notice.

"Oh, yes," Yukito said caustically, "Make me the villain again, why don't you! Obviously all of this is _totally_ within my control. Obviously it's me who's leading that poor gentleman in there on, no doubt for some illicit personal scheme - this has _nothing_ to do with the fact that _keeping that man happy is the difference between a living wage and unemployment for four of my best friends_. Do you think that I _like_ being slobbered on by everyone with even the faintest _iota_ of moon magic in their veins? Do you honestly think I _like_ it when men – and women – who aren't you look at me like I'm a cut of meat? Do you actually think that I _enjoy_ having to smile politely to that man in there, or the boy at the supermarket counter, or the girl at the movie theatre while they think that I haven't _noticed_ that they're undressing me with their eyes? And you, Kinomoto-san, you _dare_ to think that _I've_ been being unfaithful to _you_ when I live _every day of my life_ being cautious of myself – so as to keep my promises to _you_!" Yukito was shouting now, truly shouting, unable to contain his towering fury. His shoulders were shaking, his eyes were watering, his mouth was set in a grim line.

Seeing Yukito raging at him seemed, in a perverse way, to actually please Touya – Yukito was finally allowing his emotions to float up close enough to the surface to see. Rubbing his face tiredly and telling himself that he deserved that, he sank down onto the couch, making it very clear that the confrontation was over.

"I know, Yuki, I'm sorry," he groaned into his hands. "But it still just doesn't seem _right_."

"Then I suggest you take it up with Clow," Yuki snapped, voice still blazing. Touya looked at him, slightly surprised by the venom on his tongue, and Yukito immediately felt guilty for continuing to push the fight. He took three calming, steadying breaths, and forced himself to recognize that his love had come to _him, _apparently with the intention of talking to him evenly and rationally, and was sitting in front of him now calmly taking the abuse that Yukito was giving him.

"Okay." Yukito said shortly, half turning away from Touya, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose from where they'd fallen askew during his tirade. "Here's what we're going to do. I am going to go outside for – oh – let's say five minutes. Once I can act like a reasonable human being again, I will come back in, and we will start this conversation over."

Yukito didn't wait for Touya to answer, instead turning smartly and heading for the main door, so he missed the small, appreciative chuckle that Touya sent after him.

Once alone in the cold, antiseptic white of the men's washroom, Yukito felt his temperature begin to return to normal. He washed his face, and took a number of deep calming breaths, first mastering the fury, and then mastering the tide of guilt that the fury always left in its ebb. After seven minutes he looked himself critically in the mirror – the splotches of color in his face were now due to cold water, not anger – and decided that he was ready to face Touya again.

He found him where he had left him, craning his neck slightly to get a better look at the hole in the back room wall from where the fax machine had made impact. Taking one more deep breath, perhaps for luck, Yukito _forced_ a composed expression on his face and joined Touya on the couch.

"So. What did you want to see me about?" he asked brightly. Touya actually laughed, and Yukito found, to his surprise, his own mouth curving up at the edges.

"Well, I wanted to talk to you about a conversation I had last night. With your brother."

Yukito gazed at him, for a moment totally uncomprehending, and then slowly a horrified expression began creeping across his face. "I am so sorry," he began to babble, only semi-coherent. "Whatever he said to you just ignore it, I will _kill_ him when I get my hands on him, you don't _ever_ have to listen to a _word_ that he says –"

"Wait, shut up!" Touya said over him, placing his hand over his mouth to cut him off. "Um. I love you," he continued nervously. It hadn't been what he'd meant to say, but it was resoundingly true nevertheless, and it did seem to mollify Yukito somewhat for having been interrupted. "Look. I've been being kind of an insensitive jerk to you," he had the good grace to not react to Yukito's suggestive snort, "and I'm sorry. I know that this whole thing with Fanren and Soichiro hit you really hard, and I guess I've been doing a really terrible job of being supportive. I just wanted to tell you that if you want to talk to me about it, I'd like to listen. I know – I know I sometimes act, I don't know, _betrayed_, when you're unhappy and I can't just pull three words out of my ass to make you feel better, and… I know I'm out of line. I'll really try to cut it out, I promise. You're allowed to be unhappy, okay?"

As he said the last, he wrapped an arm around Yukito and drew him up against his chest, tightening his hold a little when Yukito didn't immediately start trying to claw out his eyes. He had been holding him that way for a long time when he heard Yukito say, in a very small voice,

"I wasn't cheating on you with Soichiro."

Touya grinned drily. "Y'know, I'd _mostly_ figured that out by now, but you could have saved a lot of trouble if you had just told me that in the first place."

Yukito nodded against his shoulder, apparently unwilling to say anything more for a while.

"You really won't be angry with me if I talk about Soichiro?" Yukito whispered some time later. The anxiety, guilt, and doubt in the other man's voice, as he said the words, twisted Touya's heart around in his chest – and he recognized that this, then, was the comeuppance he got for his childish behavior.

"No, I won't. I want to hear about it. I promise."

Yukito took a shuddering breath, and began talking. It might not have been the time or the place, but it was like a great dam had been released from somewhere just beneath Yuki's heart, pushing the words out from the force of more words behind them.

"I'm so sorry, Touya. I'm sorry I'm not strong enough – I tried to be, I really did, but it was just too much for me to take. First having to face the fact that I'm nothing but a generic sorcerer's golem – I know you and Sakura have never treated me that way, but it's _true_ – realizing that I'm not special or unique, I'm just the child of some godforsaken _recipe_… And then meeting Soichiro, and seeing parts of myself in him, and wanting so badly to help him with the pain that he was feeling, to help him grow up even knowing that he's no longer human, to teach him how to live, even still…

"And failing at it – watching him turn away from me, join that gang, be enticed away by the other construct children, and knowing that truly, it wasn't my fault, but wondering, all the same, if I could have made it turn out different if I hadn't been so preoccupied just then, when we realized it had to be Fanren who was making the constructs… I felt so culpable, so terrible, and then I was so _afraid_, afraid that they would kill him, afraid that they'd kill _me_, and then I just felt _horrible_ that I could think about my own skin when Soichiro was suffering so badly.

"And _then_ realizing that those constructs knew my real name, and possibly where I lived, and with who, and not being able to accept how badly Soichiro had been tortured to get the information out of him, because if I did I'd never be able to think about anything else again, and being _angry_ with the poor, poor little boy because then I had to be afraid for _your _life too, and the entire time I just felt so unbearably _guilty_ because I knew that I was keeping things from you, I knew how it must look, I know how sensitive and insecure you can be sometimes, and I just didn't… I didn't have anything left to spare for you. And that's horrible." Yukito pulled away to look Touya in the eyes. "You're my soul mate, in this case literally, because I took a piece of your soul from you when you gave me your magic to keep me alive, and I didn't have anything left to spare for you. So I'm sorry that I couldn't be strong enough."

Touya actually had to close his eyes against the onslaught of emotion that was boring into him through Yuki's. Regaining his balance, he pulled Yuki close, so that his words would be felt as well as heard.

"I'm not sure _you_ have the right to apologize to _me_, in this situation," he croaked. "Since from where I'm standing, it looks like I'm the one who should be making all of the apologies. And as for being weak – _Christ_, Yuki, you're the strongest person I _know_. I don't think a normal person would even have the faculties to _feel_ all that, much less keep on getting up in the morning and slogging through life with all of that hanging over their head."

Yukito sniffed wetly into Touya's shoulder, but Touya could tell he wasn't crying. Yuki hardly ever cried. "I won't keep things from you anymore," he half-whispered, and Touya could tell that he was making the promise to himself as much as he was making the promise to him.

"And I'll let you be unhappy for as long as you need without getting insecure about it." There was a listening pause. Eventually, Touya grinned. "Or I'll try, anyway." At this, Yuki nodded. He allowed his head to rest against Touya for another few breaths before pushing him gently away.

"I _need_ to go deal with Suzuki-san," he said regretfully. "I've left him waiting there for over an hour. And next time, you four, if you're going to eavesdrop you could at least have the good grace to not hide it," he called out, making Touya jump in surprise. One by one, four abashed office doors creaked half-open.

Touya nodded and stood up, helping Yuki to his feet as he did so.

"That's fine," he agreed, brushing Yukito's hair out of his eyes, and tweaking his glasses back straight. "We can finish this conversation later. The hard part is just starting it."

Yukito nodded and turned away, but Touya caught him up from behind. "I love that sweater on you, you know," he purred teasingly.

"Now you're pushing your luck," Yukito warned him, a smile licking at the corners of his mouth, and Touya let him go. He watched Yukito disappear behind his office door, giving him one last, quick smile before the door closed, and then turned around to leave.

And was brought up short by a tall, strong-looking, intimidating woman with a crop of dark hair framing her face. Touya hadn't heard her move at all, and nearly jumped to find her standing between him and the door.

"I changed my mind," she said abruptly. Touya blinked, not quite sure how to respond. "I guess you're all right, after all."

Touya wasn't sure whether he was being complimented or insulted, but fortunately he was saved from replying.

"Sakuko, lay off of him," a bright tenor voice called from behind one of the half-closed doors.

"Yeah, Sakuko, Jesus. He just did something really sweet and now you're going and making him all uncomfortable," a matching female voice chimed in. Sakuko looked annoyed, but then smiled, and held out a hand for Touya to shake. Feeling distinctly off-kilter, he took it, and managed to make it to the door without any further incident.

…

"A friend of yours?" Suzuki-san asked blandly as soon as Yukito had snapped the door closed. His voice was still neutral, but the irritation was now clear in his eyes.

"My husband, actually," Yukito said curtly. Suzuki-san shot a pointed glance at the naked ring finger on Yuki's left hand, which he ignored. "I try not to take my marital problems to work with me, but sometimes it can't be helped."

"Well, I hope you got everything ironed out," the man said disdainfully. "Look, Yukito, I have some bad news for you. I'm sorry to have to tell you this," he didn't sound particularly sorry at all, actually, "but the foundation board has decided that the returns we're getting on this anthropology lark aren't worth the expenses. You all – your salaries, and the resources you need for your projects, and this office – cost us a pretty penny, I don't mind telling you, and we – or that is, _they_ – don't feel like we're seeing enough out of it."

Yukito had already been emotionally spent before Touya's impromptu visit, and now he was beyond exhausted.

"I thought it might come to this," he said dully, abandoning all pretext. "I know that the Yasayuga project isn't coming up with particularly attractive findings, but –"

"_No_, Yukito," Suzuki-san said firmly. "You misunderstand me. The board didn't vote to disband the Yasayuga project, the board voted to disband the partnership. Consider this your notice of termination. The foundation has the funds to keep paying your rent and your salaries for another two weeks. I trust you can inform the others?"

There was a strange, white swirl threatening to engulf Yukito's mind, rendering him temporarily unable to see, speak, or hear. Yukito found himself nodding dumbly purely on reflex. He wondered, vaguely, whether he was in shock, and what would happen when the odious little man's words finally penetrated the chill that had fallen over his brain.

"Good," Suzuki-san said, pushing back his chair. "I'll see myself out. Keep in touch."

Yukito sat, stiffly staring after him for quite some time, swallowing down hard on his emotions every few seconds. He couldn't tell if it was laughter he was swallowing, or tears.

…

Touya was cooking when he got home that night, and the sounds and smells of pots clanging and food simmering went a long way towards warming Yukito's frozen nerves. He groaned a response to Touya's greeting and flopped down onto the couch without even looking into the kitchen.

A moment later, Touya was peering down into Yuki's face over the sofa's back, a concerned look in his eyes.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, when Yuki pulled his glasses off and laid them on the table, rubbing his eyes furiously.

"Suzuki-san and the foundation are disbanding the partnership," Yuki mumbled without preamble. "The foundation board voted on it last night, apparently. We all got our two weeks' termination notice."

Touya looked stricken, although Yukito couldn't see it through his hands.

"Wow," he said after a moment, sounding truly awed. "You're sure having some year." He came around to sit on the coffee table, facing Yukito's still form.

"You know the most awful part about it?" Yukito said suddenly, voice flat and conversational. "I'm actually not even that upset. I'm so tired, and their expectations of us have been so fricking _insane_ for such a long time that part of me is almost happy to see it go."

Touya reached over and grabbed one of Yuki's hands. "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes," he offered. Yuki actually smiled.

"Well, that's something," he agreed.

"Hey, Yuki," Touya said, many minutes later, once the smells from the kitchen were announcing loudly that dinner was ready. Forcing his hands behind Yukito's back, he gently pushed him into a sitting position and then back up to his feet. "I wasn't going to mention this for a while, but I've been thinking… why don't we just move back home?"

"Back to Sakura's house?" Yukito asked incredulously, actually stopping on his way to the food.

Touya rolled his eyes. "No, you dork, just back to Tomoeda. You still have your house there. And I know you'd like to be closer to Sakura."

"But what about your residency?" Yukito asked, looking at Touya as if he'd grown a second head.

"It's over in a couple of weeks," Touya said easily, smiling. "That's why I didn't feel bad taking today off." Yukito looked affronted.

"Where have I been?" he asked, sounding offended, but he allowed his eyes to crinkle upwards as he said it.

"You've been busy," Touya answered firmly, sliding Yukito's chair back under the table and scooping some rice pointedly onto Yukito's plate. He had been surprised and concerned earlier, when he had put his arm around his lover, to feel how skinny Yuki had gotten. "There are some job openings at Seijyuu Hospital that I was thinking about applying for."

"Well, you've practically worked for every family in Tomoeda, so I'm sure you could get the job," Yukito said thoughtfully.

"And also," Touya said gently once he was sure that Yukito was actually eating, "Dad's always talking about how he wants to start an anthropology department as an off-shoot of the archaeology department. You could always talk to him about moving the partnership to Tomoeda University."

"I don't know," Yuki answered doubtfully around an enormous mouthful of beef and rice. "Don't you think that was just talk? And I'd hate to get a position just because I'm the son-in-law of a department head."

Touya merely nodded. Yukito even sparing the energy to be hesitant was a good sign – at least he hadn't rejected the idea in its entirety. They spoke about other things for the remainder of the meal, but Touya distinctly heard Yukito mumble to himself, over his fifth helping,

"And I guess Sakuko, Yasuo, and Yuri _do_ have …"

Yukito was preoccupied for the rest of the evening, helping Touya distractedly with the dishes and flipping blindly through a magazine after dinner. Finally, as if coming to a decision, he threw the magazine onto the coffee table.

"I think it's a wonderful idea," he said resolutely. Touya looked up, surprised and a little worried.

"I didn't mean for you to decide tonight," he rushed to reassure him. "You've been through the wringer today, I shouldn't have even mentioned it –"

"No," Yukito cut him off, and his voice was steady and strong and self-assured. "I've really thought about it. Even if I can't find a job at the university, I would love to be closer to our family. And Tomoeda isn't so far out of the way that I couldn't get a job downtown or you couldn't still get down to the city to see Dr. Kobayashi."

"For _me_ to get down to see Dr. Kobayashi?" Touya asked, a warning beginning to glitter in his eyes.

"I'm going to cancel my appointments," Yuki said airily. Touya opened his mouth to argue, but Yukito put up a hand to silence him. "Wait, before you say anything. I'm willing to compromise."

"Compromise?" Touya sounded non-plussed.

"Yes, compromise. Tomoyo's back from her safari now. What if I promise to talk to her – really _talk_ to her, about important things – for an hour every week. You know she's just as good as any therapist, and I wouldn't have to lie to her because she already _knows_ about Clow and magic and Sakura."

Touya was silent for a long time, and for a moment Yukito was actually concerned that Touya was going to be difficult over it.

"What would you do to make it up to her? You know she wouldn't let us pay her."

Yukito grinned. "I was _thinking_ about introducing her to my publisher. But if that doesn't work, I'm sure I could come up with something."

Touya nodded, first thoughtfully, then more vigorously. "Well, it's fine with me. You know, I've actually been wondering if this year would have been so terrible if Tomoyo had been around in the first place."

Yukito snorted, which quickly turned into a yawn, which quickly turned into a yelp when he saw the clock.

"I need to go to _bed_," he groaned. He flicked a teasing glance at Touya. "You coming?"

Touya grinned, and stood up, and pulled Yuki to his feet. "Of course," he said, slinging an arm across the shorter man's shoulders as he pushed him towards the bedroom. "But do you mind if I keep you awake for a while?"

_**One year later…**_

"Touya, hurry up!" Yukito called up the staircase. "We're going to be late!" Yukito was standing in the entry-way, doing up his coat and scarf, frowning a little as he waited for Touya to appear.

"I'm coming," Touya called back, and true to his word, a moment later he came pattering down the stairs, a carefully gift-wrapped package held securely under one arm. "Sorry," he apologized, setting the package on the side table as he slipped his arms into the coat that Yuki was holding open for him. "I needed to finish wrapping Sakura's Christmas gift."

"Apology accepted," Yukito laughed, holding the front door open for Touya and carefully locking it behind them, both with a key and a spell. After seven months of residence there, their house in Tomoeda was finally taking on the homey, lived-in quality that it had always lacked when Yukito was living there alone in high school. "We only live about five blocks away, after all, we can make it in a few minutes if we hurry. But Sakura did seem very… _firm_ that we get there right at seven."

"It must have something to do with that surprise she keeps on hinting about. Have any idea what it is?"

"Hm…" Yukito murmured, slipping one gloved hand into Touya's free one as they turned onto the sidewalk from the front drive. "I think she's getting a dog."

"_What_?" Touya yelped, laughing in surprise.

"No, I'm not kidding!" Yukito tried to say earnestly, but he was laughing too. "She keeps on talking about the 'newest addition to the family' –"

"_What!_" Touya gasped again, but this time he looked stricken.

"Touya, has your sister looked pregnant to you?" Yukito asked him drily, wincing a little as he waited for Touya to stop crushing his knuckles between suddenly vise-like fingers. "Like I said, she's probably getting a dog. Maybe a cat, but I don't think Kero could stand to have something more vain and selfish than him in the house. And that's just the sort of thing that Sakura would get really excited about," Yukito continued, smiling to imagine what the addition of a puppy would do to their already crowded family.

The two lapsed into silence, both enjoying the effects that the previous day's snow fall was having on the lamp-lit suburban streets. The white, powdery glitter softened the dull fluorescence of the street lights, and gave the world a romantic, anticipatory atmosphere. It was a beautiful evening, so they were far from the only walkers out tonight. They smiled and waved at their neighbors who called greetings from across the street, or who they passed as they hurried towards their destination, and stalwartly ignored the few, pointed glances they were given by those whose sensibilities were offended by seeing two men holding hands in _public_.

As they rounded the corner that brought them onto Sakura's block, they began walking too quickly to make conversation comfortable, but Yukito snuggled a little deeper into Touya's side as they came up on the familiar, cheerfully-decorated house.

"Well, I guess we're about to find out," Touya muttered, remembering their earlier conversation, as they walked up the carefully salted front steps. As usual, the door burst open before they'd had a chance to ring the bell, and they were swept inside by the hands and raised voices of an exuberant Sakura, Tomoyo, Syaoran, Keroberus, and Fujitaka.

"Where's everyone else?" Touya asked, carefully setting Sakura's present by the old, beat-up coat rack, where it would be out of the way. "I thought that Aunt Sonomi and Grandfather were coming for dinner, too."

Sakura and Tomoyo exchanged giggling, secretive glances, and Touya rolled his eyes.

"Okay, you two," he growled, giving Sakura the hard glance that used to have her admitting to stealing food and breaking curfew. "Out with it. What's going on?"

Sakura gave one more shivering little giggle of delight – not the reaction that Touya was used to getting from that particular glare – and turned towards the living room.

"Dad, bring her out!" she yelled, bouncing on the balls of her feet in her exuberance. In all of the ruckus, Fujitaka had slipped into the other room, unnoticed.

"'Her'?" Touya and Yukito said at the same time, exchanging uneasy glances. But a moment later, Fujitaka had walked back into the room, a glowing smile on his face, carrying a small bundle of fabric in his arms. His entrance sent shockwaves of calm, beatific stillness through the assembled crowd, and by the time he got to Yukito, there was near perfect silence.

"Here," he said, pushing the baby into his arms. Yukito's jaw dropped open in surprise, and he held the small, swaddling figure awkwardly, as if worried that he'd break it.

"Dad," Touya asked uncertainly, looking into the baby's face as if he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing. "I don't get it. Whose – whose baby is this?"

Sakura and Syaoran looked deep into each other's eyes, and Touya felt his stomach drop out. But then Sakura stepped forward and, readjusting Yukito's hold on the doll-like shape, said simply, "Yours."

Yukito spoke for both of them when he turned blank eyes on the girl and said flatly, "I don't get it."

"She's a construct," it was finally Tomoyo who had the presence of mind to explain. "Sakura and Syaoran have been working on her all year. She's a totally new kind, and totally self-sufficient," she hurried to reassure, seeing the startled, uneasy glimmer beginning to form in the depths of both Touya's and Yuki's eyes.

"I hope you're not mad," Sakura said anxiously, coming to stand close enough that she could peer into both of their faces and placing a small, worried hand on first Touya's elbow, then Yukito's. "It took me and Syaoran months to design her. We took both of your DNA for the human part, and Yuki, I took some of the magic that Touya had given to you for the magical part. Um… I hope I didn't…"

"What's her name?" Yuki asked, not noticing that his voice had taken on a gooey, far-off quality, and never taking his eyes off of the baby's sleeping face.

"We haven't given her one yet," Fujitaka answered, still positively glowing with happiness. "She's just a day old. It's your privilege, as the parents, to name her."

Touya and Yukito exchanged nervous glances, each drawing a roaring blank, both far too shocked to think.

_Anneliese_. It took Yuki a moment to realize where the whispered word had come from. As soon as he did, a shocked "Oh!" escaped his lips, and he hurriedly handed off the baby to Touya in order to run tender hands across his scalp.

"_You're back!" _he said, once he'd remembered how to speak inside his head. "_It's been a while."_

_It has been_, Yueh agreed sourly. _A word of advice: next time you get yourself in over your head, shutting people out is _not_ generally a good way of handling the situation_.

Yukito tactfully refrained from reminded his other half that Yueh was the reigning king of shutting people out when upset, and instead said to the room at large,

"Yueh says that her name should be Anneliese."

A small silence followed this pronouncement, as Yukito continued to listen to Yueh and everyone else exchanged relieved smiles that Yukito was finally properly whole again.

"What?" Kero finally growled after a long moment, clearly surprised and frowning in recognition.

"That's an English name," Touya murmured, absently rocking the baby in his arms, where she lay far more naturally than she had in Yukito's.

"He says," Yukito brought surprised eyes up to Fujitaka's face, "that that was your grandmother's name – Clow's grandmother, that is. Is that all right with you?" he turned eagerly to Touya.

"I think it's beautiful," Touya answered dreamily, smiling down at his daughter.

"Sakura – Yueh wants to know what her aspect is," Yukito said quickly, in the distracted voice of someone who is trying to talk and listen very rapidly at the same time. Sakura actually blushed with pleasure, and with one hand guided Yukito's palm to rest on his daughter's cheek. He gasped in surprise, and then a brilliant grin spread over his face as his other arm went around Touya's waist.

"Her aspect is imagination," Sakura said.

**A/N: For those of you who've read my other stories, you know I'm a total sucker for happy endings. I hope you liked it. And by the way, please REVIEW. I know what flaws I see in my writing, but I don't know what flaws **_**you**_** see. Thanks!**


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